The Last Notebook of Leonardo by B.B. Wurge Page B

quit!”
    â€œDad, hurry up,” I shouted. “Look at the moon!”
    Then he woke up all the way. “Oh right,” he said, chuckling. “Don’t worry. We have a few hours yet. But thanks. We’d better start paying attention if we want to land at the right spot.”
    For the next three hours we all three stared at the map and stared at the moon, and pointed this way and that, and argued over exactly the right direction, and Dad slowed down the ship considerably so that we could have time to maneuver. Leonardo had
specified a flat spot in the middle of a gigantic crater. We lowered our spaceship down into the crater, and all we could see was the blinding white sand of the walls rising up around us. Leonardo had suggested holding up a sheet of smoked glass at this stage of the journey, but Dad handed around sunglasses instead. We set down and I could hear the sand and gravel crunching under the wheels of the wagon.
    â€œNow,” Dad said, “let’s drive around. Keep your eyes peeled for any sign of Leon.”

15
    The open plain was so bright that I had trouble seeing clearly even with my sunglasses. After we had driven around for a while, I thought I spotted something nearby in the sand. “Are those rocks, Dad, or what? They look kind of regularly spaced.”
    Dad drove up closer and we could see that it wasn’t rocks. It was a row of indentations in the sand. They looked like footprints.
    â€œAre they tentacle prints?” Dad said anxiously. “Noma, can you recognize animal tracks?”
    Noma stared at the prints, squinting out of her old eyes, and then shook her head and said, “How strange. They look just like bear prints. The foot is elongated and ends in a set of claws.”
    â€œWow!” Dad said. “I’d be surprised to find a bear walking around on the moon. But I’ve been surprised before. Bears are migratory, but I don’t see how one
could migrate right off the Earth. What if it’s a man, and he forgot to clip his toenails? Let’s say Leonardo lived up here for two or three years, and forgot to bring a nail clipper with him.”
    â€œDad,” I said, “that’s ridiculous. He would have invented a nail clipper out of a rock.”
    â€œNot necessarily,” Dad said. “Maybe he was too busy. I think we’re looking at the last footprints of Leonardo, preserved for five hundred years because there’s no weather up here to wipe them out.”
    â€œBut,” I said, “how did he walk across the sand without dying from the lack of atmosphere?”
    â€œHe could have been holding his breath,” Dad said. “He got so bored sitting in his spaceship, looking at the moonscape through a window, year after year, that he finally climbed out to walk around. He held his breath as long as he could, and we’ll find his mummified body at the end of the trail.”
    â€œBut the trail’s about a mile long!” I said. “Look at it! It goes right out of sight! How could he hold his breath for so long? Especially with toenails like that, he wouldn’t be able to walk very quickly.”
    â€œI suggest,” Noma said gently, interrupting our argument, “that we follow the trail and find out.”
    So we did. Dad drove slowly alongside the prints and we tracked them across the open plain. After a while we saw a dark blob far up ahead.

    â€œWhat’s that?” I said.
    â€œLet’s be careful,” Dad said. “It might only be his mummy. But if I see any tentacles, I’m driving straight up and getting us out of here.”
    The closer we got, the less like tentacles it looked. But it also didn’t look like a mummy. It was standing upright and looked hairy all over.
    â€œDo you think,” Dad said in a hushed voice, “it’s an orangutan?”
    â€œI think it’s a bear,” Noma said.
    â€œNo!” I said, suddenly understanding.