The two men who assisted in that task are the two security guards among us. In fact, one even pretended to resist entering the platform buggy, just to make it look more realistic that all of us were headed for death. Of course, no one else in the dome knows any of this. But those of us in the platform buggies will survive.
None of you should feel guilt, as this was my decision and you had no choice in the matter.”
The speakers in our platform buggy clicked off as Director Steven hung up his microphone.
Back at the dome, time and air were running out for everyone.
Including Rawling McTigre, the one man I trusted above
everybody else.
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On the other side of our platform buggy, the security guard was handing out nutri-tubes for breakfast.
I struggled to push my wheelchair over there. It had been getting more and more difficult to move. I wondered if Director Steven had lied to us about the oxygen, just so we’d die peacefully and without fear.
When I reached the security guard, he gave me my choice of scrambled eggs and bacon, or scrambled eggs and sausage.
“Like there’s a difference,” I said.
He grinned. “Good point.”
He was square-shouldered, with a brush cut and a squashed nose, as if it had once been broken.
“Scissors?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” I said. As usual, I just ripped open the top of the tube.
“Hey, muscles,” he teased, laughing, “promise you won’t get mad at me.”
“Ha, ha,” I said. I pushed away and found a spot near the edge of the observation deck. If breakfast had to taste bad, at least I could eat it where I had a nice view.
I’d slept for nearly ten hours and the sun was already above the horizon, casting long shadows from the jagged rocks that littered the Martian sand.
Then it hit me. If the reason I struggled to push my wheelchair was because of lack of oxygen, how come I could still rip open a nutri-tube?
I thought back over the last few days. Not once had I been forced to use scissors on the nutri-tubes.
So maybe it wasn’t my hands and arms getting weak.
But why then was it still difficult to push my wheelchair?
I thought about that as I slowly chewed and swallowed the gooey yellow paste that was called scrambled eggs and bacon.
Mom moved beside me and sat on the floor to eat her breakfast.
“I’m still in shock,” she said. “Director Steven had this planned out for a long time. Early enough to steal the oxygen tanks and pretend he knew nothing about it.”
“Yeah,” I said, my mind on my wheelchair.
“I’m curious what you think,” Mom said thoughtfully. “Is what he did right? I mean, Director Steven—“
“Can you help me out of my wheelchair?” I asked,
interrupting her.
“Sure, but—“
“Now?” I asked.
I gave her what was left of my nutri-tube.
Mom set it aside and lifted me out of the chair by grabbing under my armpits. She set me on the floor. I leaned my back against the glass of the platform buggy wall.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Tyce?” she asked. “What is it?”
I spun the back of the wheelchair toward me. There was a small tool kit underneath the seat that made it possible to take the wheelchair apart and put it back together.
“Give me one minute,” I said, reaching for the tool kit. “I’ll tell you if I’m right about something.”
I tilted the wheelchair on its side. I undid the bolt that attached the wheel to the axle and took the wheel off.
The other scientists were in their own discussions and didn’t pay much attention. After all, they were the greatest minds in the solar system. To them I was just a kid. A crippled kid.
With the wheel in my lap, I used a screwdriver to dig out the bearings that let the wheel turn on the axle.
I tried to spin the bearings.
They hardly moved.
That, at least, explained why it had been so hard to move my wheelchair.
And that also explained why the solar panels would not work properly. Suddenly I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, what the problem was!
I put the wheelchair together as quickly as I could, had Mom help me back into my wheelchair, and then approached the security guard.
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“Director Steven,” I pleaded, “you have to let them know.”
I was at the console of our platform buggy, speaking into my headset. Director Steven sat at the console of his platform buggy, also wearing a headset. I’d just finished telling Director Steven about what had happened to my wheelchair and the ball bearings.
They’d been ground down, probably by the microscopic silicon of Martian sand, making them hard to move. What if the wheels on the solar panels had the same problem?
He looked across at me. The platform buggies were parked side by side in the shade of a hill.
“No,” he said, meeting my eyes directly.
“No?”
“They already believe we’re dead. It’ll cause panic if they find out we’re still alive.”
“But this can save them!” I said.
“You aren’t sure of that.”
“No, but—“
I was talking in a low voice. The security guard who had set me up at the console was standing at the opposite wall because I’d asked him if I could have a private conversation with Director Steven.
“But nothing,” Director Steven said. He ran his hands through his hair. “Already their oxygen levels are dangerously low. Even if they fixed the panels now, the generators wouldn’t produce enough oxygen to save them.”
“We could drive back,” I pleaded. “We could share our
oxygen with them as they wait for the generators to make more oxygen.”
“I will not gamble these twenty lives on another wild guess of yours,” Director Steven said. “If you’re wrong and we go back and share our oxygen, we too will die. It’s that simple.”
“But—“
“But nothing. We sit here and wait. There will be no communication with the dome. Am I clear?”
“But—“
“Am I clear?”
I pulled off my headset and smiled.
The security guard came back to the console and took the headset from me.
“Well?” he asked. “Did you get what you wanted?”
“Sure did,” I said. I reached for the switch that would link our platform buggy radio with the main radio back at the dome. I flipped it on as if there was no question about it.
The security guard frowned.
“I didn’t think there was supposed to be any communication with home base,” he said.
“I just talked to Director Steven about it,” I said. Which was true.
I leaned forward and spoke clearly into the radio microphone.
“Platform buggy one to home base. Tell Rawling McTigre to talk to Tyce. Platform buggy one to home base. Tell Rawling McTigre to talk to Tyce. Platform buggy one to home base. Tell Rawling—“
“Grab that kid!” It was Director Steven shouting into the speaker of his platform buggy, his voice echoing in ours. “Shut him up! Now!”
The security guard pulled me away so quickly that I almost fell out of my wheelchair.
Director Steven stood at the glass wall of his platform buggy, glaring at me. All other eyes in both platform buggies stared at me.
“Sit him in a corner and make sure he doesn’t move.”
Director Steven’s voice was thick with rage. “If he tries anything else, put him outside. Without a space suit.”
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It took five minutes for the scientists in our platform buggy to forget about me and Director Steven’s threat.
Mom drew up a chair beside my wheelchair.
“What was all that about?” she asked softly.
“I wish I ha
d time to explain,” I said. “But I need to go to sleep as fast as possible.”
“Tyce?”
“Can you trust me on this, Mom? I need to sit here with my eyes closed. Turn my wheelchair around so no one can see my face. Make sure nobody comes by and disturbs me. That’s all I ask.”
“For how long?”
“Until I wake up,” I said. “Please?”
She sighed. “This is so strange.”
“So is letting all those people die.”
Without a word, she turned me away from the other people in the buggy. My view was of the back side of the hill. Rock and sand in all colors of brown and red and black.
I closed my eyes and waited in the wired jumpsuit I was still wearing from when I left the dome. I hoped and prayed that someone at the dome had heard my short message. I hoped and prayed that Rawling would understand what I meant. I hoped and prayed that very soon, in the darkness of my mind, I would fall off the edge of a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.
Ã
“Tyce?”
“Took you long enough,” I said to Rawling.
I tilted my video head and peered into his face. His skin was gray, and he was sweating badly. I clicked around the room—
slowly, to keep from getting dizzy—with my other three video lenses to see if anyone else was with us.
“Someone heard your broadcast and called me in my mini-dome,” he said. “I tried to radio the platform buggy, but I didn’t get an answer. If you wanted me to turn on the robot, why not say so instead of making me figure it out?”
“Because,” I answered. I spun my robot wheels back and
forth, warming up. “Then Director Steven would have known how I intended to talk to you. And he would have stopped me.”
Rawling wiped his face. His jumpsuit was blotched with
sweat. “You guys are supposed to be dead.”
“Long story,” I said. I looked around the lab and found the tools I needed. I handed them to Rawling. “I will tell you after.
But we need to get to the solar panels.”
“Sure,” he said, “but I don’t feel so good. Maybe we can get someone else to help you.”
I reached across and pinched his shin bone with my titanium fingers.
“Ouch!” he said, shocked.
“You have got to stay awake. The lack of oxygen is starting to get to you.”
“Lack of oxygen? But—“
“You don’t have much time. Follow me.”
I wheeled forward. I got to the door of the lab. I tried twisting the knob with my fingers. I twisted too hard. It fell off in my hand.
“Oops,” I said. “I do not know my own strength.”
I wheeled back and picked up a chair with both hands. I held it in front of me.
I crashed into the door with it. The door popped open.
Checking behind me with my rear lens, I made sure Rawling was following me. He staggered slightly as he tried to keep up.
“It is the wheels of the solar panels,” I explained quickly.
“The panels work fine. But if the railing wheels are stuck even slightly, the panels cannot track the sun’s movement as they slide along the roof of the dome. They do not have the right angle to catch enough sunlight to produce power.”
I noticed no one was walking around the dome.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“I think sleeping,” he said. “Which is what I want to do.”
Continuing forward, I reached back with one arm. I grabbed Rawling’s hand.
“Ouch,” he said again.
I didn’t let go.
“You are coming with me.”
I led him up the ramp to the second-floor walkway, then along the walkway. Soon we were at the ladders that reached up to the solar panels.
“You will have to climb,” I said. “I cannot. All you need to do is disconnect two or three wheels from the solar panel railing.
Bring them back down.”
He nodded, slowly.
As I waited below, I scanned the dome. No movement
anywhere. Were people already dying?
I switched to infrared and scanned the nearest mini-dome.
The mini-dome itself was a light red, showing that it held slightly more heat than the cool air of the dome. Inside, a deep glowing red in the form of a body showed me where someone rested on the bed. I watched carefully and saw a slight rising and falling of the form. The person was still breathing.
Switching off infrared, I went to the visual light spectrum, seeing colors as normally viewed by human eyes. I swiveled my video lens upward at Rawling. He was nearly finished taking off a couple of wheels.
I hoped I was right in my guess.
If I was wrong, I’d be in my robot body, helpless to prevent all these people from dying over the next few hours.
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I blinked open my eyes in the platform buggy.
There was noise and excitement behind me.
I spun in my wheelchair.
Everyone was gathered at the far window, staring down from the platform buggy at the desert floor.
I smiled. I knew what had their attention.
I wheeled up beside them.
“It’s a robot,” I said loudly.
My words quieted them down.
One of the scientists frowned at me. “Of course it’s a robot,”
he said. “We aren’t stupid. We want to know what it’s doing here. Five minutes ago, I saw it coming here at a speed I estimated to be forty miles an hour. Then suddenly it stopped in front of our platform buggies. And what’s that in its hands?”
“Solar panel wheels,” I said. “Damaged solar panel wheels.
I’m not totally sure it’s from microscopic particles of Martian sand, but that’s my best guess. I think over the years, the sand has seeped into the dome. I do know that my own wheelchair can hardly move because the ball bearings have been ground down, and the only reason I can come up with is sand.”
I had everyone’s attention.
“The solar panels follow the sun,” I said. “If the wheels on the solar panel railings have the tiniest bit of drag, the solar panels will always be a few degrees behind the best angle to catch maximum sun. I think that’s what’s been happening. Slowly, the generators have been dying. Not because anything is wrong with the panels. But because something’s wrong with the wheels.”
A voice interrupted me.
“What’s the discussion in there?” Director Steven asked from the other platform buggy.
“Mom, could you turn the speaker down and let me finish?
Then all of you can decide what to do. . . .”
“I’ll turn it down,” another scientist volunteered. “This is all so crazy, there must be some truth in it.”
“Thank you,” I said. It hurt my head to look up at everybody from my wheelchair. “That robot brought back a few of the wheels from the dome to prove that’s the problem. We need to return to the dome. We can replace the wheels and begin generating electricity within hours. The people in there don’t have to die.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Director Steven waving wildly, trying to get our attention. I ignored him and explained more.
“The oxygen levels in the dome are so low that everyone has passed out. They need oxygen from the platform buggy reserves to survive until the generators kick in again. It’ll take about an hour to return. That’s just enough time to save them.”
“And if you’re wrong,” another scientist said, “we’ll have given them the oxygen that would keep us alive.”
“That’s why I brought back the solar panel wheels,” I said.
“To prove it to you.”
A third scientist snorted through his thick white beard. “You brought them back? That’s a robot out there. You’ve been here in your wheelchair, asleep. Now I understand why Director Steven thinks you’re dangerous. You’ve lost your mind.”
I’d forgotten.
The experiments with the robot were so recent that only Mom, Rawling, and the director knew about them.
I grinned at all the people staring at me.
“I think,” I said, “I have a way to prove to you that I’m in control of the robot.”
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It had become a beautiful sensation, falling off the edge of a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.
When the falling ended, I focused my video lens upward at the platform buggy observation deck. I saw nine people crowded at the glass wall, peering down on me. Behind them, I knew, my motionless body sat in my wheelchair.
The heat of the Martian sun seemed to glow in my titanium bones. It was midday, and the temperature registered 65 degrees Fahrenheit. In my entire life, I’d never been outside. It felt as marvelous now as it had when I’d first left the dome to scoot across the plains.
And wind. I’d never heard the sound of wind. Only read about it. It whistled across the stark rocks embedded in the Martian sand. Tiny bits of sand rattled off my wheels and arms as I sped across the landscape. It was such a glorious feeling of being alive.
I wanted to sit where I was and enjoy all of this—the things that humans on Earth can have anytime, just by stepping outside.
But I’d made a promise to the scientists in the platform buggy.
And they, in return, had made a promise to me.
If I could convince them I was the brains of this robot, they’d follow me back to the dome and share their oxygen with the others.
First I raised one titanium hand and waved.
They hadn’t expected this. I could see on their faces that a few were startled. Others waved back, big smiles on their faces.
I waved at Director Steven in the other dome.
He crossed his arms and frowned at me.
I stopped waving. My left hand held two solar panel wheels, small like the wheels of roller blades on Earth. I dropped my right hand, which held one wheel, down to the ground. Holding the wheel tight between two fingers, I dragged my other titanium finger as I began to move the robot back and forth.
When I was finished, I surveyed my handwriting in the Martian sand. TAKE US HOME, it said in big letters.
I looked up again and saw that many were pointing down.
Oxygen Level Zero Mission 1 Page 7
