or worried, even once. Even when they were running short on water or having trouble finding a part to get their RV running again. He’d become pretty good at pretending everything was always OK. It was only after his family had gone to sleep that he’d let himself be afraid of anything.
Through his window, Benny watched as the fleet of Space Runners holding the other EW-SCAB winners began to drift towards one another. They were definitely the shiniest cars Benny had ever seen, the outside made of a silver metal so polished and reflective that it almost looked as though they were comets flying through space. They continued to slow in speed, until eventually they stopped moving completely about a mile above the Moon’s surface.
“Ugh,” Drue said, reclining. “This is the worst part.”
Benny had just enough time to wonder if they’d stalled before all the vehicles were diving forward, heading towards the silvery tunnel. Benny gasped, goosebumps prickling all over his body as they sped towards the Moon’s surface. It looked to him like they were going to plough right into the ground. Fortunately, the Space Runners were precision vehicles, and just when Benny was sure they’d crash, the cars all pulled up, changing flight patterns like a flock of silver birds, until they floated a mere metre above the rock below as they raced into the tunnel connecting them to the Lunar Taj.
From the outside, the entrance had looked like nothing more than a long, shining chrome hallway. Inside, however, the walls were awash with a rainbow of colour, casting a kaleidoscope of reflections all over the Space Runner and its interiors.
“This is incredible …” Benny murmured as he held out his hands and watched the colours run over them.
Suddenly Benny’s gut felt like it was twisting into knots. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and leaned forward. That’s when his ears popped, and the roar of the vehicles vibrated in his head, escalating until Benny thought he could actually feel the sound.
Ramona let out a worried gurgle from the back seat.
“We’re entering the pressurised zone,” Drue said, stretching his jaw. “Don’t worry. We’re almost through already.”
Suddenly the colours and the roar were gone, and the Space Runners sped into the Taj’s courtyard: the Grand Dome. One by one the cars circled in front of the resort, giving Benny his first real look at where he’d spend the next two weeks. His eyes darted about, trying, impossibly, to take in everything at once. The Lunar Taj had looked like a W from space, but up close it was something else entirely, a playground of light and colour and shiny surfaces. The building itself was built out of a dark, gleaming red metal. Gold stairs led up to the chrome front doors, which were three metres tall, at least. The windows, too, were outlined in glittering metals. In fact, it seemed to Benny as if everything was ablaze with light, from the tower roof with its blooming sheets of gold to the spotlights casting projections of star systems onto the sides of the building, as if the resort itself were a secret galaxy all its own. On the ground, plants of unnatural colours blossomed in bejewelled pots: palm trees with electric blue fronds, metallic roses, shrubs made of neon.
The sight of the Lunar Taj was enough to cause him to forget about the popping in his ears and spinning in his stomach. In the back seat, Ramona muttered a string of indecipherable exclamations as she stared out at the sparkling building.
“Impressive, right?” Drue asked as he watched Benny shove his face against the car’s window. “I want a resort of my own like this one day. Built like a big L. No, no. All my initials. DBL spelled out across Jupiter.”
“Isn’t Jupiter mostly gas?” Benny whispered, not taking his eyes off the Taj.
“You know what I mean.”
The Space Runners lined up in five neat rows in the centre of the courtyard, near a big chrome statue of a hand reaching out of a pool of water, its fingertips almost grazing a solar system of gemlike planets orbiting it. Benny’s vehicle parked itself in the back corner. Once it had stopped and the doors unlocked, he took a second to catch his breath and then climbed out onto the inky black gravel. Ramona spilled out of the back seat, basically throwing herself onto the ground.
“Eagle has landed,” she whispered. “Environment stabilised. Stand by for system diagnostics.”
“Uhh …” Benny started, but she waved for him to leave her alone as she climbed into a sitting position, leaning against the side of the vehicle.
The other kids were exiting their Space Runners and gathering near the fountain in front of the resort. Benny hadn’t really met any of them back on Earth. In fact, half the Space Runners had taken off from different parts of the world and joined his group once they were already in flight. The scholarship winners came from all over the globe, sporting everything from shaved heads to waist-length braids woven with metallic thread, but they were all united in their awe of the resort in front of them.
Except maybe Drue, who pushed his floating travel bag around to the passenger’s side, stepped over Ramona’s legs, and put his hands on his hips.
“All right, let’s see what they’ve got lined up for us. I hope I’m on the top floor or else …”
His mouth hung open like he had something else to say, but no words came out.
“Drue, what are you—”
“Shhh, shh, shh, Benny,” Drue said, shaking his head and nodding forward.
It was only then that Benny realised Drue was looking at two girls unloading their Space Runner a few metres away from them. One was petite, with black hair cut into a short bob. The other girl was hoisting an overstuffed piece of luggage out of the back seat. A mountain of blond curls fell over her shoulders and added a few centimetres to her already impressive height.
“It just seems really … fragile,” the blonde said. “Like, I’m a little freaked out that some idiot is going to throw one of these rocks at it and then it’s bye-bye life because I’m sucked out into space.”
“The glass is really a secondary defence against the outside elements,” the other girl said. “Mostly for show. It’s not even glass, but a practically indestructible polymer created by Elijah and his researchers. Besides, if something did happen and the dome was breached, you’d need to be much more worried about all the oxygen getting sucked out, not you.”
The blonde girl frowned. “You’re not making me feel any better.”
Drue poked Benny with his elbow. “I think we just met our first Moon friend.”
“Let me guess,” Benny said. “The girl with the bag that looks like it’s about to explode?”
“Psh,” Drue scoffed, heading towards the girls. “Dream bigger, Benny.”
“Huh?”
But Drue was already several steps ahead of him. Benny followed, half because he didn’t know what else to do, and half because he figured there was a high probability that Drue was about to embarrass himself, and that he kind of wanted to see.
“Hey, there,” Drue said when he was just a couple of metres away from the girls. Both turned and stared back at him, confused. “I’m Drue Bob Lincoln.”
“I’m Jas—” the shorter girl began.
“Jazz.”
