Dr. Jordan turned his back on me. He had no reason to worry that I could do anything. Not from my wheelchair. Not unless he fell into my lap.
I had to twist my head to watch him step over to his computer. The satellite feed ran through a program on the computer. If the computer started properly, I truly was dead. I knew I’d need God’s help through the last moments of neuron gun torture.
But if the computer wouldn’t operate …
He snapped on the power button. I was hoping for a sizzle or pop, hoping the paper clip I’d struggled to lay across the power relay inside the computer box would short-circuit the system.
And I got far more than I hoped for.
Instead of a sizzle or pop, the entire computer screen exploded, sending a surge of blue light toward Dr. Jordan’s stomach!
I think it was more the surprise than the electrical surge that threw him back.
He staggered toward me with a small yelp. He bumped into my wheelchair and began to fall.
Right across my lap!
What I wanted to do was push forward and fall out of my wheelchair and roll on top of him and somehow wrestle with him until he gave up.
But his weight changed that. He’d locked the brakes on my wheelchair and, braced from going backward, it flipped forward with his weight. Because I was trying to push forward too, it gave extra force.
Dr. Jordan’s head hit the edge of the desk with a sickening thump. He tumbled to the floor, groaned once as he flopped a few times, then collapsed completely. Unconscious.
“His neuron gun,” Ashley said after a second of silent disbelief. “Can you get it from him?”
I, too, stared in disbelief. “Won’t work for me. Each gun is matched to the fingerprints programmed into it.”
“We’ve got to do something. Fast. He could wake up any second.”
I stared at Dr. Jordan for another couple of seconds. His glasses had fallen from his face.
“Can you slide your chair this way?” I asked Ashley. “I think I have an idea.”
CHAPTER 22
Ten minutes later, Blaine Steven walked into Dr. Jordan’s office.
I couldn’t see him. I could only hear his first words to Dr. Jordan. His voice was muffled to me. “I came as soon as possible. What is—?”
I knew why he’d stopped in surprise because I could picture what he saw.
Ashley was standing near the computer with the busted screen. I was slumped in my wheelchair, my head down, in the robot activation zone of concentration, with the transmitter connected to my neck-plug. And Dr. Jordan sat in the chair where Ashley had been taped to the armrests. Only now Dr. Jordan was the one whose wrists were taped in place, his right hand holding the neuron gun, pointed at the doorway.
“Dr. Jordan!” Steven said. “Your face!” There was a pause. “Your nose!”
I could picture, too, exactly how it appeared to Blaine Steven. Dr. Jordan’s nose had been duct-taped shut. That way he couldn’t sneeze or snort out a blast of air. Otherwise, the ant-bot would be gone, and there would be no way to force Dr. Jordan to do as he’d been told.
I waited for him to follow the first step of our instructions.
A loud, angry yell reached me.
Step 1. Hit Steven in the legs with the neuron gun. Right on schedule.
“Shut up,” Dr. Jordan told Steven. Dr. Jordan’s voice was loud to me. Very loud. “And do exactly as I say. Ashley is going to tape your hands together. Let her do it, or I’ll be forced to fire another shot.”
“That’s a … that’s a …”
“Yes,” Dr. Jordan said. “It’s a neuron gun.”
“But. . . but …”
I wasn’t surprised Blaine Steven sounded muffled to me or that Dr. Jordan’s voice was loud and echoed weirdly. I was, after all, in Dr. Jordan’s sinuses. That’s right. Up his nose.
Seconds later I heard Ashley. “It’s done, Tyce. He’s taped. Wrists and ankles.”
Good. Dr. Jordan was taped in his chair. Steven was sitting on the floor, also taped and helpless. They couldn’t do anything to Ashley now.
“Give me the computer code that disables all the neuron guns,” Dr. Jordan said to Steven. “If you do, I’ll send Ashley to your office, where she’ll enter the code. And then you’ll be safe.”
“Have you lost your mind?” came Steven’s voice. I imagined his face growing red with rage underneath his thick gray hair.
“Give me the code,” Dr. Jordan said, “or I’ll have to shoot again.”
“Jordan,” Steven said, “if I disable your gun, all the neuron guns under the dome will be disabled. What’s gotten into you?”
Ashley giggled. “That’s a better question than you know.”
If the ant-bot inside Dr. Jordan’s nose had been capable of giggling, I’d have done it too.
Ashley continued to speak. “Tyce, give Dr. Jordan a reminder of why he should obey us.”
I did. Reaching out a robot arm, I pounded once inside the darkness.
Dr. Jordan moaned.
While Dr. Jordan had been unconscious, Ashley had moved her chair close enough to me so I could rip the tape off her wrists. I’d helped her as much as I could to move him into the chair, and she had quickly taped Dr. Jordan’s wrists together, then taken the ant-bot and placed it on his upper lip.
I’d plugged in with the mini-transmitter and, in control of the ant-bot, had gone straight up Dr. Jordan’s nose, past the nose hairs that seemed like fence posts. Then Ashley had taped his nose so he couldn’t blow me out.
Let me be the first to say that the inside of someone’s nose is as gooey and slimy as you can imagine. But I hadn’t been able to think of anything nearly as effective. I’d traveled as far up his nose as possible, then waited for him to wake.
Minutes later, when he finally grunted himself back to consciousness, Ashley had informed him of his situation. From inside the nasal passage, the ant-bot’s audio sensors had let me hear her threaten him.
“It’s very elementary, Dr. Jordan. If the ant-bot goes up any farther, it can penetrate your brain. You don’t want that, do you? Tyce, let him know you’ve got the ant-bot in there.”
That’s when I’d done it the first time. Begun hammering the sensitive tissue of his sinus passage with both robot arms. He’d understood the message.
Then Ashley had given him the rest of his instructions, beginning with a call to bring in Blaine Steven.
It had taken only one hit on the inside of his nasal passage to convince Dr. Jordan he needed to follow the rest of the instructions.
I heard another yelp. This one from Blaine Steven again. As instructed earlier, Dr. Jordan must have shot him in the shoulder. Briefly I felt sorry for Steven. I knew what it felt like to be hit by a neuron gun.
“Now do you understand I’m serious?” I heard Dr. Jordan ask. “Give me the code to disable the guns.”
“Yes! Yes!” Steven whined. “I understand. You can have the code.”
He gave us the right one, the first time.
Which made the next part a lot easier.
CHAPTER 23
“Hello,” I said to Dad. “Can you hear me?”
His head spun up and down and side to side, just like I’d done when I’d first heard the ant-bot’s voice. I wished I could see his expression. But I was controlling the ant-bot, perched on his shoulder, lighter than a fly. And with only two lights burning in the entire large meeting room, I was nearly invisible on his jumpsuit. I was far too close to see his face.
“Can you hear me?” I repeated. From Dr. Jordan’s office, it had taken half an hour to reach the meeting room with the ant-bot. I’d gotten lost twice. Going down corridors that seem two miles wide is a confusing thing.
“I can hear you,” he whispered with hesitation. “Unless I’m losing my mind. But who are you?”
In any other situation, I’d have been tempted to have fun with this. But I resisted. I was certain the hostages would all be safe soon enough, but I knew too well that R
awling was still stuck under tons of rock. The sooner the scientists and techies took control of the dome, the sooner the rescue attempt could begin.
“The guards can’t stop you now,” I said. “Their guns won’t work.”
Again, Dad’s head spun from side to side. “Is this some ventriloquist joke? Who’s playing games?”
“Dad,” I said, “it’s Tyce. Really. I’d tell you where I am, but I’m afraid you’d knock me off as you look for me.”
“Tyce?” he asked. “Tyce?”
Before I could answer, Mom’s voice interrupted. “Honey, quit mumbling. You’ll wake the others around us.”
Dad said nothing. I could guess what was going through his mind. If he told Mom he was answering some voice that came to him from the darkness, she’d think he’d suddenly gone crazy.
“I’m real,” I told Dad, and then I used the words he always said to me. “Trust me.”
“Did you hear that?” he asked Mom. “It’s a voice!”
“You’re dreaming. Go back to sleep.” She patted his back and nearly knocked me off his shoulder.
Time to get serious, before the ant-bot was hurt.
“I know this is hard to believe, but it is Tyce,” I said. I needed to come up with something he knew only I could know. “The last time we spoke, I was trying to feed you live video from the cave-in.”
There was a pause, and then, “Tyce?”
“You’ve got to trust me. The neuron guns won’t fire anymore. Wake everyone up. It’s 200 of you against 6 of them. They don’t have a chance. Then come and get me from Dr. Jordan’s office.”
Dad groaned. “How can I believe a voice in the dark?”
“It’s Project 3. A miniaturized robot called an ant-bot. Don’t move. I’ll pinch your neck to show you this is real.”
I did.
He laughed in the darkness. “Tyce!”
“It’s 200 against 6,” I said one more time. “All you need to do is walk up there and ask one of the guards to shoot you. When everybody sees that his gun doesn’t work, the fight will be over.”
And that was it.
Except for the cave-in.
CHAPTER 24
During the first crisis that hit the dome, Mom asked me to keep a journal so Earth people would know what it was like to live on Mars. Even though we survived the oxygen crisis, Mom insisted I keep writing about what happens on Mars. She has a good point—no one else in the solar system can say they grew up on this planet. At least not yet. And she says that my journals will at least let me look back when I’m an old man and remember everything a lot easier.
Even though Mom’s right, there have been times I complained to her about writing my journal entries. I’d much rather be up at the telescope or working with the robot bodies.
I’ve decided, though, that I’ll never complain again.
Here I am, parked in front of my computer, when only 24 hours earlier I was a prisoner in a storage room, afraid of what might happen to me and my parents and the other scientists under the dome, and especially worried about the cave-in.
It is great to be safe. With my biggest problem being what words to put on a blank computer screen. I could be there again, in front of the piled-up rocks of the cave-in, frantically scared that once we dug through, we would find Rawling and the other three dead.
I closed my eyes and thought about what it was like to be there. When I was ready, I began to type.
09.24.2039
If the rescue team consisted of techies in space suits, the oxygen and water of the men trapped by all that rock would have run out long before those techies could have reached them.
Instead, the men were rescued by robots. It became the Mars Project’s best argument for the use of robot bodies controlled by humans like me or Ashley.
We began the rescue attempt early in the morning after the scientists and techies had locked up Steven, Jordan, and the guards. The temperature beneath the jet-black Martian sky had dropped to minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind had picked up, making it even colder.
But Ashley and I were back in the dome, miles away, warm and comfortable and relaxed. Relaxed, except for our minds. Connected by the remotes to our robot bodies, we were concentrating as hard as if we were in a marathon video game. What was better, we were working at it together.
At our direction, all those miles away from the dome, the robot bodies picked up rocks and threw them backward far faster than any human could work. We were helped by two things. First, the robots could lift rocks six times heavier than any Olympian weight lifter. Second, because of the reduced gravity on Mars, even the heaviest of rocks were within the load capabilities of the robots. And unlike human bodies, the robots didn’t get tired. A platform buggy stood nearby, with techies ready to replace the robot batteries.
The robots worked out there, side by side, for 15 hours straight, taking breaks only when Ashley and I got too tired to concentrate.
Then, in the 16th hour, we broke through.
Rawling and the other three were in a deep pocket of space, close to their last breaths of oxygen.
Dad told us that while Ashley and I were handling the robots, the dramatic rescue attempt was captured live on video and transmitted to Earth media sources. All across the Earth, people watched as Rawling got to his feet and hugged my robot.
Dad says that one image was enough to earn renewed support for the Mars Project and for the budget it would take to develop the robot bodies even more.
Dr. Jordan and Blaine Steven never did get their chance for worldwide attention, but the robots did.
And I have to admit, I liked that!
CHAPTER 25
“It was a setup from the beginning,” Rawling said, scratching his short, dark hair that was streaked with gray. “The bombs were in one of the packs. If we hadn’t set them against the side of the cave before going in deeper, we would have died instantly.”
Rawling and I sat at the telescope on the upper floor of the dome. It was good to see him healthy after wondering if I’d ever see him alive again.
“Dr. Jordan wanted you out of the dome before he began his takeover.”
“Exactly,” Rawling said. “I should have been suspicious when he insisted that the search needed a medical person. But his position gave him even more authority than the dome director.”
I stared upward through the dome at the incredibly black sky of a Martian night. “You won’t have to worry about him anymore, huh?”
“Wrong, Tyce.”
He said it so sharply that I snapped my head back.
“Think about it. Jordan nearly engineered civil war back on Earth. It’s not something he could do without help. And then there are the others you’ve told me about. Tomorrow we’re going to learn everything we can from Ashley. I think there’s a lot more to worry about.”
Rawling was right. I had plenty of questions too. Because of the cave-in rescue operation—with both Ashley and me controlling the big robots to help move rock—things had been too frantic for me to ask her about anything. Including how she’d survived the Hammerhead space torpedo crash.
Tomorrow. Not only would we talk to Ashley, but tomorrow marked the last day I’d see my dad for three years. Tomorrow night the shuttle headed back to Earth. With Blaine Steven and Dr. Jordan along as prisoners.
“Tyce?” Rawling broke into my thoughts. “Look.”
He pointed. I didn’t need the telescope to know what it was.
Earth.
“Must be strange,” I said. “Seeing it hang there night after night, with all your memories of growing up there.”
Rawling laughed. “No more strange than your seeing it hang there night after night, being the only human in history never to have spent any time there.”
“Yeah,” I said softly, “it is strange.”
“Probably be even more strange seeing it for the first time.”
“Yeah,” I said, “it would be.”
“Not would, Tyce. Will.”
I wasn’t sure I understood. “It will be strange to see it for the first time?”
Rawling patted my shoulder. “Tomorrow night. You and Ashley will be on the ship with your dad.”
“What!”
“For the Mars Project to survive, we need a lot of questions answered. And Mars isn’t the place to find those answers. You will go, won’t you? I’ve already talked with your parents about it, and even your mom agrees that she wants you to go.”
I hardly heard him. I was staring at that ball of white and blue, 50 million miles away.
Earth.
CHAPTER 1
Asteroid.
I used to have this picture in my mind that an asteroid collision meant a rock the size of a mountain ramming a planet or moon at full speed. That the impact would have the power of 10 nuclear bombs. That there would be a massive crater and earthquakes and maybe even parts of the planet or moon splitting off to spin back into space.
Not with this asteroid.
At the most, it had been half the size of a pea. Barely more than space dust. If it had been headed toward Earth, the friction of its high-speed entrance into the atmosphere would have burned it in a brief flare of glory. Anyone seeing it from the ground—and they would have, because even a pea-size asteroid throws a lot of light when it burns—might have wished upon a star.
It had not hit Earth.
It had hit our spaceship, over three-quarters into its 50-million-mile journey from Mars to Earth. It wasn’t like running into an iceberg. We hadn’t felt the impact inside the ship. But instantly alarm bells had started to clang, waking all nine of us inside and throwing us into emergency mode.
The tiny piece of intergalactic rock had punctured the outer hull, and now valuable oxygen bled into the vacuum of space. Worse, like a tiny stream of water wearing through soggy paper, the hole was growing far too quickly.
It was too dangerous to suit someone up and send him out attached by a safety cable. Which meant I was the one to step into outer space.
Well, not me. But my robot body, because it didn’t need the protective clumsiness of a space suit.
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