Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

Time burped…zero gravity…hair of the dog…

Gourbots…Citizens of the Cosmos…and Little Green Men?

Dad wants her to go. Mom wants her to stay.

The decision is hers alone, because…she’s never coming back?

Oh, yes, she’s only 11!

Š2015 Carole Marsh/Gallopade International/ Peachtree City, GA All rights reserved.

Published by Gallopade International/Bluffton Books.

Printed in the United States of America.

Art Director: John Hanson Project Manager: Janice Baker Original Cover / Content Design for series: Vicki DeJoy Cover / Content Design for this book: Susan Van Denhende Cover / Content Illustration: Blakeley Knox

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Children who are born today are likely candidates to grow up and colonize space. At the end of this book, meet Alyssa Carson, a young girl who, according to NASA, is going to Mars!

Other Books by Carole Marsh WHEN KIDS TAKE OVER NASA THE MYSTERY AT SPACE CENTER HOUSTON THE LITTLE GREEN MAN MYSTERY ADVENTURE TO THE PLANET MARS

Prologue—Part I Before Time Burped I was born and live in the small, colonial-era port town of Bath, North Carolina. The pirate known as Blackbeard once lived here. It is a pretty little town on a peninsula that juts out into the broad and blue Pamlico River. This river flows out to the Pamlico Sound. Once it reaches the Outer Banks, it sort of snakes its way around all those sandy barrier islands into the Atlantic Ocean.

My friends and I spend lots of time boating on the river and in the creeks…dangling raw chicken pieces off lines of string to catch crabs…or hanging in hammocks reading books.

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

1

I live in a building that had been the old colonial library, which has a cool spiral staircase. When I was younger, I could skip all the steps and slide down the center post like it was a fire pole. There are churches and gardens, white picket fences, a tiny Bath post office, and the school.

My parents like to keep a “low profile,” they say, in spite of their very-important-and-somewhatdangerous jobs with NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and CITCOS, Citizens of the Cosmos. Except for their jobs, some expensive electronic gadgetry in our home, and the fact that Dad always wanted me to grow up and “move to Mars” (and he wasn’t 2

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

kidding!), my life was just as normal as any other kid’s. Until…

Until the day “time burped”—at least that’s what my dad called the brief tear in the space-time continuum.

That’s physics talk. My father is… was? a pretty famous physicist. But this day changed everything. He vanished—into a time warp? Another dimension? For all I know, he went to Disney World?

Just kidding!

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

3

Prologue—Part II It was a normal, hot August day.

The cicadas clacked-clacked-clacked by day, and the katydids katchedkatched-katched at night. It made it hard to sleep, up on my rooftop perch beside the sort-of-secret satellite dish and Dad’s powerful telescope.

I was up there laying on my back on the warm asphalt roof, watching for falling stars—it was the time of the annual Perseid meteor shower.

“Whoa! There goes one!” I said to my dog, Scram.

Dad was down in the family room, glued to some stupid television show 4

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

for a rare change. Mom was up in their bedroom, reading a mystery book.

I was so busy counting stars that I did not even realize what had happened.

There was no screeching sound, no flashing lights, nothing. I didn’t even know anything had happened until the following day, actually.

I just went to bed. But the next morning, Dad had vanished, the TV still flickering and his lemonade all melted and sticky on the table. When Mom and I looked around, we realized that nothing else was gone, not his briefcase or papers or computer.

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

5

Bath was such an old town in an old farming and fishing community that you couldn’t tell by looking at the listing-to-starboard tobacco barns, or the local feed and seed store, or anything else, that sometime in the night, “time had burped.”

But Mom knew; she figured it out right away. She sent out a few s-posts (spaceposts, what you might have called e-mail way back when), and then she did something extraordinary: She changed my name.

“Why?” I asked.

“You’ll understand one day,” she said.

That’s the only explanation I ever got.

6

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

There was a flurry of ridiculous stuff on the news and then everyone ignored “whatever had happened.”

But not me. It changed my life. Mom left for a super secret meeting that she could not tell me about. I was left with Dad’s telescope, my sweet Aunt Mabel, and homework. I was eleven.

It was only a matter of time…

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

7

Thirty days later…

I told my aunt that I was going to space camp for this school year.

She just smiled. I knew she would not remember that I said this. She might not even remember me. She has Oldtimers, as my friends call Alzheimer’s disease.

I packed my NASA backpack and headed off to hitchhike across the galaxy—not really! I packed, yes, but then I followed the instructions that Dad had left me in an envelope taped beneath his desk drawer. He had told me it was there, but not to look unless I ever needed it.

8

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

“How will I know?” I asked him.

“Oh, trust me, you’ll know,” he answered.

And I did. I called the phone number that was in the letter and a Captain Dawson said, “Hello, Columbia. We were expecting your call. We will pick you up at Bath Bridge in the morning.”

It was the first time that anyone had called me by my new name.

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

9

MCC, Mars Colonization Center It felt just as weird when I filled out the application forms. The very first question was: What is your name?

On that line, I wrote: COLUMBIA LASTNAME. The rest of the form was easy, for the most part: height, weight, and all that stuff. But the next page I left blank.

When I sat down with my evaluator, she smiled at me. A lot of people smiled at me. They knew my parents.

But I don’t think they even knew that “time had burped” at my house and that Dad had vanished.

10

Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

If they did know, they didn’t let on, and I sure didn’t. Dad always said he “had my six,” meaning my back, and I felt sure that I needed someone to have my back at this time. Why? I had not heard from Mom, either.

“So, Columbia,” the evaluator said.

M. WIGGINS was the name on her badge. “I understand that you have volunteered for this mission? You were not recruited?”

“Uh, yes, ma’m,” I answered hesitantly.

You could say my dad had volunteered me or had he really recruited me, and I had volunteered me, I wondered.

He’d filled me with space wonders since I was a small child. As I grew older, he focused on one thing: MARS. Columbia Lastname: First Girl Colonist on Mars

11

zero gravity girl

“This book sure fires up your imagination!

Just think about being one of the first people from Earth to go and live on Mars—and you’re just a kid!”

—Ellie Jones, age 9

Columbia Lastname has had an unusual life for an eleven-yearold. Her physicist father has vanished during a tiny tear in time. Her mother is head of Citizens of the Cosmos, and is never home. No wonder Columbia can see no reason not to do as her father always wished for her—become the first girl colonist on the Red Planet. No, no reason at all, except that she has to leave home—probably forever? Can she take her dog, Scram? She’s slightly scared and severely smart.

But is that enough to survive zero gravity? Loneliness? The long trip?

The responsibilities? And what will she find? Who, if anyone, will she meet? Will she grow up?

Get married? Have little Martian kids? Columbia’s sense of duty and wonder propel her to take this awesome journey to become THE FIRST GIRL COLONIST ON MARS!

Carole Marsh is also the author of WHEN KIDS TAKE OVER NASA, The Mystery at Space Center Houston, The Little Green Man Mystery and Adventure to the Planet Mars.

www.gallopade.com ISBN 13: 978-0-635-12082-3

$7.99