The Dark Side of the Moon. Jeramey Kraatz

but his father was behind driving a truck full of gear at the time and had let Benny ride with him, buckling him into the passenger seat and covering his mouth with a bandana in an attempt to spare him from getting a mouth full of sand. It had seemed to Benny like they’d flown across the dunes at the speed of light, the two of them bringing up the rear of the group as they tried to reach an abandoned farm with a working well they’d planned on camping at for a while. They’d almost got there, too – Benny could see the huge, rusty barns just a few miles away – but in the last stretch the wind picked up, blowing sand across their path until Benny couldn’t make out the other vehicles and trailers that had been in front of them. His father hit the brakes, and in seconds they had stopped.

      “Standard procedure,” his dad had said. “Nothing good’d come from driving in a storm like this.”

      The sound of the storm was so loud around them that Benny could hardly hear him.

      “But so close?” Benny had said.

      His dad had just shaken his head and pulled off his own bandana now that he was sure the sand engulfing the truck wasn’t going to get in too badly.

      “What if we went over a cliff? What if we ran into someone from the caravan?” he’d asked as he slid his seat back and put his boots up on the dashboard. “Nah, we’ll wait it out. There’s no GPS or stars to help us through something like this, and it’s too easy to get lost when you can’t see where you’re going. Only a fool would try.”

      Benny couldn’t say that he’d always been able to see exactly where he was going the last few days, but the memory did give him an idea.

      He aimed his Space Runner’s laser as low as it could go and began blasting the crater wall beneath him, gouging a deep trench into the rock and sending clouds of debris floating into the paths of the ships behind him. He had just a few seconds of invisibility to work with and he tried to make the most of it. Pulling up on the flight yoke, he flew in a loop, hoping to take the ships by surprise.

      And he did. Or one of them, at least. His laser hit its crystalline wing, causing it to ram into the crater wall and fall behind. The other ship, however, dodged him and corrected itself so quickly that Benny didn’t have a chance of avoiding its counter-attack. A bolt of energy slammed into the pilot’s side of his Space Runner with such force that Benny was sure the whole car was going to break apart as he banged his head against the side window, straining against his seat belt. Lights all over the dashboard started blinking as he struggled to both catch his breath and regain control of the vehicle. But it was too late. He was too close to the ground, and before he could pull up on the yoke the car slammed into the bottom of the crater, spinning over the craggy ground, throwing Benny around until finally it skidded for twenty metres and came to a stop upside down.

      Smoke began to fill the cabin of Benny’s Space Runner. Coughing, he hurled himself against the door a few times. On the third try, it gave, and he rolled out onto the surface of the Moon, the force-field helmet of his space suit automatically appearing round his head and filling with oxygen. He half crawled for a few seconds before managing to get to his feet just in time to see the alien ship returning, circling around and heading straight for him.

      He tapped on his collar, trying to connect to his friends’ comm systems. “Guys? Anyone? I’m kind of defenceless down here!”

      Suddenly they were all shouting in his helmet, on their way to rescue him. But even as they raced towards the crater, he realised they’d never make it in time. The ship coming after him was too fast, and in the low gravity, there was no way he’d be able to avoid its blasts for long. It was homing in on him now, already within range to attack. Benny could see a surge of blue light on the back of the ship. This was it.

      Suddenly, a bolt of gold light shot forth, briefly illuminating the dark corners of the crater and striking the side of the alien craft. The ship exploded in a flash of fire, quickly snuffed out by the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere. The few remaining pieces of the ship then fell towards the surface in a rain of smoking metal and minerals. Benny hit the ground and covered his head as the wreckage battered the rocky crater floor around him.

      When he was sure that it was over he got to his knees, looking about, breathless. The alien ship had practically disintegrated, and the pilot inside …

      The others were still shouting through the speakers in his collar, telling him that the two remaining ships were retreating after the explosion. He scanned the direction the gold bolt had come from.

      And then he saw it. In the shadows near the crater wall there was some kind of vehicle that was too big to be a normal Space Runner. He watched as a long, cannon-like tube folded back into the hood of the craft as it lifted off the ground. It hovered in the air for a few seconds before jetting towards Benny.

      Sweating and shaking, he held his breath and clenched his fists as the craft landed near him. The pilot-side door opened. A figure wearing a space suit that was patched in several places stepped out. Whoever it was also wore a force-field helmet that was completely black, as though they had an inky egg for a head.

      Benny had just enough time to breathe a sigh of relief that the figure looked human before the person was upon him, with one giant gloved hand round his neck, lifting him off the ground, fingers pressing against his collar.

      “Stop!” Benny shouted, beating his fists against the figure’s broad chest.

      Then there was a beep inside his helmet and the hand let go. Benny drifted back down to the ground as a man’s voice, low and gravelly, came out of his collar speaker.

      “Who are you?” he asked.

      “Benny Love,” he replied in a wheeze as he scrambled to his feet. His hands immediately went up to his throat – the man had been manually connecting their radios, not attacking him. Or at least, he didn’t think he’d attacked him. Behind him, his friends’ three Space Runners landed.

      The man tilted his head and pressed something on the back of his neck. His helmet slowly became transparent until Benny could see who was standing in front of him. The man’s hair was matted and oily, grey but for a streak of jet-black across the front, contrasting the ghostly pallor of his skin. A thick, dark beard pushed up against the inside of his force-field helmet. He stared at Benny through thick goggles.

      Benny gaped at the man. “Um …” he started. “Dr Austin Bale?”

      The man raised one bushy eyebrow and nodded.

      “Are you OK?” Hot Dog shouted as his friends rushed to his side.

      Jasmine stopped in her tracks when she saw Dr Bale. “It’s you.”

      “Well, that was easier than I thought it would be,” Drue said. Then he frowned. “Except for the aliens, I guess.”

      Dr Bale looked them over one by one, stopping on Hot Dog. “You, I recognise. The girl in the crashed SR.”

      Hot Dog just nodded.

      “It was a matter of good fortune for you,” Dr Bale continued. “I’d gone to see if the Taj was still standing after our radar picked up on that approaching storm.” He looked to Benny. “You’re welcome for saving your life just now.”

      “Yeah,” Benny said. “I mean, you’re right. Thanks! Sorry, I just … guess I didn’t expect to find you so fast.”

      “You came looking for me?” he asked.

      Benny nodded as his mind spun, hardly believing their luck. This man – the elusive scientist they’d been searching for – had utterly annihilated one of the alien ships with some sort of weapon unlike anything Benny had ever seen.

      He had so many questions.

      Dr Bale’s nose twitched, his overgrown beard and moustache scratching against the inside of his helmet.

      “There’s nothing for you here,” he said, turning back to his big Space Runner. “Go back to your fancy hotel. Tell Elijah to keep a leash on his children. This is my side of the Moon.”