Up there, my father was rolling the Habitat Lander to the right or left as it blazed through the upper atmosphere, steering it like an out-of-control sled careening down the steepest snow-covered mountain. Soon—too soon—he’d have to find a way to stop it.
The Habitat Lander’s glowing heat shield, now appearing bigger than the sun, suddenly dropped straight down. I gasped. My eyes followed as it flipped and tumbled, a blaze of fire heading directly toward distant mountain peaks. Then the blaze became shattered jewels of fire as it exploded on contact.
I took another deep breath, reminding myself of what I already knew but so easily forgot because this was only the second landing I’d witnessed. That blaze was only the heat shield, discarded and dropped as part of the landing process. I let out a sigh of relief and searched the dark sky for what needed to happen next.
Retro-rockets.
Somewhere up there, if the Habitat Lander was still fine after dropping the heat shield, parachutes would have been released from the nose of the craft so it could land—feet-first. Very soon, retro-rockets would kick in to help the braking process.
I found myself holding my breath again. One … two … three …
Like a mushroom of flame, the retro-rockets burst into sight, maybe a mile above us. The burst drew our eyes like fireworks, and all of us on the platform buggy focused on it, following it downward.
I had my eyes open, but in my mind I was praying—talking with God. Some people might think he wasn’t there to listen, but I had faith that he was. It was hard-earned faith too. It came when I thought I’d die during the dome’s oxygen crisis. When the crisis was over and I had time to think about it, I realized that when you get pushed to the edge of life and begin to wonder what’s on the other side, your heart is really and finally open to believing God is behind this universe. You begin to understand that he’s as invisible and as strong as love.
Finally the outline of the Habitat Lander appeared above the brightness. The retro-rockets pushed hard against gravity, and slowly the Habitat Lander settled on the surface of the planet. The parachutes sagged downward, covering the top of the space vehicle.
Cheers and whistles filled the platform buggy. They had made it safely.
Soon I would see my father. For the first time in three years. Because his job was so important to him.
I couldn’t help but wonder if he would be just another alien visitor.
CHAPTER 5
As we drove up to the dome, the outer door opened to allow both platform buggies inside the tunnel. When the buggies moved inside, the warm, moist, oxygen-filled air from the tunnel instantly turned into white, ghostly vapor and escaped into the cold Martian atmosphere. The inner door, of course, was still sealed to keep the dome’s air from escaping.
As soon as both platform buggies had entered the tunnel side by side, the outer door shut behind us. Only when it was completely sealed against the atmosphere would the inner door be opened.
While we waited, people in our platform buggy waved at the newcomers in the other platform buggy. I tried to pick out my father, but I couldn’t. Too many people were standing in front of me. While a wheelchair is great because it always gives you a place to sit, the disadvantage is no different from being seated at a baseball game with everyone standing in front of you to watch a big play.
We had to wait patiently as a demagnetizing process cleared both platform buggies of Martian dust. We had to wait longer until the sealing process of the outer door was complete and both platform buggies had rolled into the dome. Then the inner door began to close and seal behind us, so both doors now protected us from any air leaks to the Martian surface.
I was the first one off the platform buggy, lowered in my wheelchair with ropes by people on the platform.
Mom was waiting for me. She stood beside me as other people poured out from both platform buggies and climbed down the ladders to the surface of the dome.
Finally, among the last people, my father appeared. He climbed down slowly. After the weightlessness of space, even the weak gravity of Mars took some adjustments.
It gave me time to study him. In one way, it was like watching an interesting stranger. In another way, it was like looking at myself. I was growing tall, just like he was. Mom would often point to his photo and comment that I was also beginning to look like him. I had dark blond hair like he did. My nose and jaws and forehead were bigger than I wanted them to be, and I hoped the rest of my face would catch up so I would look more like him. My father was big, like a football player. I would be heavier and bigger too, if my legs didn’t weigh next to nothing.
Mom stayed by me, her hand on my shoulder, as we waited.
I knew she was happy to see him. I knew she wanted to run forward. But it was nice she didn’t abandon me. Unlike my father always does, I couldn’t help but think, by always going off into space.
He turned and scanned the crowd. I could tell the instant he saw my mother. A big grin crossed his face, and he broke into an awkward half-run. He threw his arms around Mom, and they hugged and kissed.
I turned my head. I mean, what kid wants to see his parents smooching?
Then something—or rather someone—caught my eye as I looked away from my parents’ hugging and kissing.
The last person, back toward me, was climbing down the steps of the other platform buggy. Except it wasn’t just a person. It looked like a kid about my age. I could hardly believe it. I’d spent my entire life alone around adults. Now there was finally someone my age!
The hugging and kissing continued beside me. My eyes, however, were riveted on the new kid. What would he be like? Would we be friends? Was he hooked on astronomy like I was? Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to share the stuff I was doing with a robot body?
I kept staring. The kid had short, black, straight hair. He was kind of skinny in the standard space uniform of a blue jumpsuit.
Finally, the kid reached the ground. He turned toward me.
Except he wasn’t a he.
He was a beautiful she. With dark eyes and high cheekbones. Asian—and beautiful. (Had I said that already? The beautiful part?)
And when she smiled and her eyes met mine across the short distance between us, I gulped.
Wow.
CHAPTER 6
Was I ready to pursue aliens?
Yes; so ready that I got up early the next morning, though I usually hated mornings because I had a habit of staying up too late at the dome telescope.
After the arrival of the Habitat Lander, my parents had walked around the dome, talking for hours. I hadn’t heard them come in because I was asleep, just like they were now, in the room on the opposite side of the minidome.
In my own room, I was up and restless because of what Director Rawling McTigre had decided yesterday. He intended to delay his announcement about the alien monsters for 48 hours. In that time, he hoped I might be able to find out more details, enough so no one would panic about the situation.
That meant that in about an hour, Rawling would send me back into the experimental bamboo corn to search for the truth about the aliens. It was something I thought might be interesting to add to my journal.
I fired up my computer, rested the keyboard in my lap, and began to describe everything I knew about Timothy Neilson and his run-in with the aliens.
“Tyce? Tyce?”
I’d been so used to hearing my mom’s voice interrupting me that it took a second to figure out that the male voice coming from the other side of the minidome was my father’s.
I saved my computer file and shut the machine down before I wheeled out into the common living area.
He was standing there in jeans and a T-shirt. He needed a shave. He held a nutri tube in one hand, a mug of coffee in the other. “Did you get a chance to open the present I got you?” he asked.
“The CD with the top 100 rock songs of the 1900s?”
I said. That was his music, not mine. Ancient stuff. “Looks great. Thanks.”
> “We can listen to it together,” my father said.
“Yeah. Thanks.” I tapped my fingers on the arm of my wheelchair.
He sipped his coffee. “Anyway, how are you?”
“Fine,” I replied.
“Got time to share some breakfast?” My father made a face. “Not that this artificial stuff comes close to a real breakfast.”
“Wish I could,” I said quickly, “but I’ve got to go.”
“This early? Where?”
“Places. Maybe I’ll tell you later, if I can.”
He frowned. “What’s the big secret?”
“Got to go,” I said as I wheeled my way past him. I didn’t care if he thought I was rude. After all, he’d been gone for three years. He’d be on Mars for only another few months until the orbit was in position for a return trip to Earth. And now he expected me to drop everything for him?
Not likely.
I had some aliens to catch.
CHAPTER 7
“Ready for those aliens?” Rawling asked, smiling.
“Which one would you like me to go after first?” I asked. “A slimy green one? Or a fat purple one?”
“Help out all earthling kids,” he said. “Get Barney.”
“Huh? Barney?”
“You know, the fat purple one,” Rawling said, then stopped. “Sorry. Forgot you weren’t brought up on Earth. You see, there was this television show where … and now I remember. It was a dinosaur … and it had been around forever … but it could have been an alien … and …” Catching my puzzled expression, he shook his head in disgust at himself. “Forget I even mentioned it. We’ve got serious business ahead of us.”
We did.
As usual for all robot work, we were in the computer lab. As usual, I was on my back on a narrow medical bed, plugged into a receiver for the 100-mile range of X-ray waves.
“Let’s go through the checklist,” Rawling said. “I know. I know. We’ve been through this before,” he said as I rolled my eyes. “But just like flying, safety is the first matter of importance.”
With Rawling I knew better than to argue.
He began pulling straps across my legs to hold me tightly to the bed so I wouldn’t accidentally jump and break the connection between the antenna plug in my spine and the receiver across the room.
“First,” Rawling said, “don’t allow the robot to have contact with any electrical sources. Ever. Your spinal nerves are attached to the plug. Any electrical current going into or through the robot will scramble the X-ray waves so badly that the signals reaching your own brain may do serious damage.”
Rawling tightened the straps across my stomach and chest. “Second, disengage instantly at the first warning of any damage to the robot’s computer drive. Your brain circuits are working so closely with the computer circuits that any harm to the computer may spill over to harm your brain.” He placed a blindfold over my eyes and strapped my head in position.
“Understood and understood,” I said.
“Lastly,” he said, “is the robot battery at full power?”
“Yes. And unplugged from the electrical source that charges it.”
The robot was at the far end of the dome near the entrance. Since the receiver worked at a distance, it wasn’t necessary to keep the robot nearby. Before coming to the lab, I’d made sure the robot was ready for use.
“Good, good,” Rawling said, squeezing my shoulder. “Any last questions before I soundproof you?”
“No,” I said confidently.
“You’re looking forward to this, aren’t you?”
It was dark for me under the blindfold, but I grinned as if I could see Rawling’s face. “Big-time,” I said. The robot was a freedom that made up for my crippled body. No one else could wander the planet like I could.
“Then let’s go.” He placed a soundproof headset on my ears. The fewer distractions to reach my brain in my real body, the better.
It was dark and silent while I waited for a sensation of entering the robot computer.
My wait did not take long. Soon I began to fall off a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.
I kept falling and falling and falling. …
CHAPTER 8
It never failed to amaze me. As I lay on the bed in the computer lab, light patterns from the other end of the dome entered one of the robot’s four video lenses. Translated digitally into electrical impulses, that light followed the electronic circuitry into the robot’s computer drive. From there, the electrical impulses were translated into X-ray waves that traveled through the dome to the receiver in the computer lab. From the receiver, the waves beamed to the wires in my jumpsuit, which were connected to the antenna plug in my spine. As the electrical impulses moved up the nerves of my spinal column into my brain, my brain did what it always did when light entered my real eyes and hit the optical nerves that reached into my brain—it translated the light patterns at the far end of the dome into images I could recognize. A similar process also allowed the robot to hear—but through sound waves that reached my own ear canals.
No differently than thinking about moving one of my own arms, I thought about moving the robot arms. And immediately it happened. I brought my titanium hands up in front of a video lens and flexed my fingers, wiggling them to make sure everything worked properly.
That’s when the sound waves of a female voice entered the robot speakers and instantly entered my own brain. Actually, it was more like the sound waves of a female scream.
I switched to my rear video lens and saw the image of a female jumping backward. It was her. The girl I had seen last night was standing a few feet away from me. Evidently she’d recovered quickly from the scare of meeting the robot; she now stared with open curiosity.
As a robot, I was about her height. My video lens looked directly into her face. From this close distance, I saw her eyes were brown. She wore tiny silver cross earrings. I rolled my wheels forward a few inches and backward a few inches.
She jumped again.
“Greetings, earthling,” I said. The robot’s voice box worked like a telephone. Although it was capable of sounding exactly like my own voice, words tended to come out more mechanically. In speaking to this girl in front of me, I dragged out my words and talked in a nasal tone, just like I’d heard fake robots talk in science fiction movies I’d downloaded onto my computer. I don’t know why I decided to do this. It must be because I have a weird sense of humor and she was too new to the dome to know this robot was actually hooked up to a person.
“You can talk?” she said, surprised.
“Yes, earthling. I can do many simple things. I can add two plus two. It equals four. Am I right?” I kept talking in that nasal, fake robot voice.
“Yes!” she said. “What about eight times eight?”
“Sixty-four. Did you not know yourself such simple mathematics?”
“Of course,” she said, folding her arms. “I was just testing you.”
“Testing? What is testing?” I asked. This was fun.
“I guess if you had real brains you’d know, wouldn’t you?” she replied smugly.
Ouch. I deserved that.
She stepped closer and looked me up and down. The robot body was ugly, all right, but in her eyes probably better than the crippled body of a kid her age. “What’s your name?” she asked, smiling. She tilted her body left and rested her right hand on her right hip.
I had to think quickly. I’d never thought of the robot having a name. I didn’t want to give her mine. It might be fun to keep secret as long as possible the fact that I was directing the robot from my real body. “Bruce,” I said, grabbing the first name that came into my mind.
“Bruce?” She smiled again. I liked that smile. “How did you get a name like that?”
“From my mother,” I said in a weird, slow robot voice. From my mother? What kind of dumb answer was that? If I had robot legs, I’d have kicked myself.
She laughed. “Ask a dumb question, ge
t a dumb answer. My name is Ashley.” She stuck out her right hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
I shook her hand with my titanium one, careful not to squeeze too hard. “Nice to meet you too.”
“Well, could you give me a tour of the dome?”
I could get to know her as the robot, and she wouldn’t have to stare at my crippled body in my wheelchair. That didn’t sound too bad. “Later, please, earthling. When I return.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, confusion on her face.
“To save all other earthlings,” I said. “It should not take me long.” I wheeled away and headed toward the dome entrance.
She waved good-bye, giggling—probably at how stupid I was.
CHAPTER 9
I wheeled outside the dome to a Martian sunrise.
I’ve been told that the sky on Earth is blue and the rising sun is yellow, with clouds around it colored pink, red, and orange. I’ve also been told that in the middle of the day, clouds are white, or if they hold rain, gray.
Not here on Mars. The sun is blue against a butterscotch-colored sky. Later in the day the sky becomes red as sunlight scatters through dust particles at a different angle. At this hour, wispy blue clouds hung high in the butterscotch sky, but they’d disappear as the day became warmer.
Now, this early, it was cold—about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A 60-mile-an-hour wind hit me, but it didn’t have much force because the Martian atmosphere is so thin. Some blowing sand rattled against my titanium shell.
Once out of the dome, I felt free. I didn’t have to wear a space suit. The cold and lack of oxygen didn’t hurt my robot body. Best of all, my crippled legs no longer mattered. I was able to wheel across hard-packed sand toward the cornfield at the speed of a galloping horse.
Which I did.
Five minutes later, I stopped in front of the huge plasticsheeted greenhouse.
Rawling and I had decided that the first thing I should do was check for holes in the sheeting. The greenhouse was designed to trap sunlight and heat. It was not designed to be sealed against the Martian atmosphere, so we expected that somewhere, along the miles of plastic sheeting, there might be a rip or 2 or 12.
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