Ambush

by Sigmund Brouwer

  From: “Rawling McTigre”

  To: “Tyce Sanders”

  Sent: 03.06.2040, 11:39 a.m.

  Subject: Re: questions

  Tyce,

  Sorry I don’t have anything to tell you at this point. If I learn anything that will be helpful, I’ll let you know as soon as possible.

  Rawling

  I stared at my comp-board screen and reread the message three times. I’d finally received the e-mail from Rawling, but I had hoped for a lot more. Where’s the background information on the passengers? Doesn’t Rawling understand it’s important enough that we need it, no matter how busy he is?

  I read it again, as if that would help. Which it didn’t.

  Is Rawling mad at me? Normally he ended all his e-mails to me by signing off with “carpe diem, Rawls.” He’d once told me that carpe diem was Latin for “seize the day.” It was the motto he tried to live by. He said that it was important to live bravely, and he hoped I would always remember that.

  Why hadn’t he reminded me to seize the day like he did in all his other e-mails? I also noticed the time the e-mail had been sent. An hour after I had asked Lance about it. Which was 12 hours after I’d sent the first e-mail to Rawling.

  Weird. I expected that Rawling would have replied much quicker.

  I thought about it awhile, then hit Reply and began to keyboard a message in return.

  From: “Tyce Sanders”

  To: “Rawling McTigre”

  Sent: 03.06.2040, 2:51 p.m.

  Subject: Re: questions

  Rawling,

  Thanks for getting back to me. I know you are doing your best. I think we have a little time before it absolutely becomes crucial. In the meantime, take care of your sore elbow. Remember, you’re no longer the young hockey player of your university days that I’ve heard so much about.

  Tyce

  I hit Send and smiled grimly. His reply to this message would tell me a lot of what I needed to know.

  While I waited, I had other questions to ask of someone else.

  I opened up a word processing file on my comp-board and let my fingers fly across the keyboard.

  Even as I concentrated on the words popping up on the screen, I was too aware of how little time I had left before my next appointment.

  “Hello,” I said to the man hooked to the wall by cable. I had tucked my comp-board under my arm. “Yesterday you said you wanted to talk. So I’m here.”

  “Good,” Steven replied. “Let’s talk about God. You’d be surprised at how interested I am.”

  He was right. I would be surprised—if he really meant it. Frankly, after all the things Steven had done, I’d written him off a long time ago. Mom always talked about God being so big that no one was ever beyond his reach, but sometimes it was hard for me to believe that. Especially around people like Blaine Steven and Dr. Jordan.

  Somehow I still assumed that his faith question had been an excuse to talk for the benefit of whoever might be listening in on our conversation.

  “Tell me,” he said. “If something happened to the Moon Racer and I died in the next two weeks, why would God ever want anything to do with me? I mean, I haven’t exactly been the best person in the world.”

  I laughed. “Neither have I.”

  Steven looked surprised. “You haven’t tried to kill anyone or take over the Mars Dome or …”

  I repeated how Mom had explained it to me: “If a person had to jump from Earth to the moon, would it make any difference if he could jump six inches off the ground or six feet? Either way, he doesn’t have a chance.”

  “True, but what does this have to do with my question?”

  “Nobody can make himself perfect enough to get to God,” I said. “No matter what you’ve done compared to what I have or haven’t done, neither of us can jump to the moon.”

  “And?”

  “It’s the same with God. We can’t get to him by ourselves. We need his help. But he’s waiting for us—to reach for him. Then he forgives us and gives us love, instead of what we really deserve.”

  I could see Steven was listening. I was really glad that Mom and I had had talks about this.

  “I know my mom and dad love me,” I continued. “But if I decided I wanted to have nothing to do with them for the rest of my life, no amount of their love could make me return to them. All they could do is wait for me to want them in my life again. And as soon as I reached out to them, they would welcome me back with open arms.”

  “Are you saying it’s the same with God?” he said, looking intrigued.

  “If you pretend he doesn’t exist—just like if I pretended my parents don’t exist—how can he ever be part of your life? Or you part of him?”

  Steven seemed puzzled. “That gives me a lot to think about.” He let out a deep breath and pointed at my compboard.

  Wordlessly I opened up my comp-board and fired up the word processing program. When the screen showed my questions, I carefully reached across the space between us and handed it to him.

  He scanned the screen and nodded.

  “Good-bye,” I said. “I’ll probably be back in an hour. If you’d like to talk some more.”

  “That would be fine,” Steven said. He didn’t lift his head. He had already begun to type.

  CHAPTER 14

  Every time I tried to move quickly from handhold to handhold, I thought of the old movie about Tarzan of the jungle, swinging through the vines. I resisted the urge to make a jungle noise as I sped toward the simulation center, exactly halfway across the ship. Ashley was waiting for me, and I had an idea I wanted to share with her.

  As I followed the curve of the corridor’s circle, the light seemed dimmer. Seconds later I saw why as I almost hit Luke. He was hanging in midair in the center of the corridor, with a lighting panel floating beside him. One argon tube hung beside the panel. He had another tube in his hand and was replacing the first one. A few scattered tools hung in the air nearby.

  “Hey, Mr. Daab,” I said. As I pushed quickly to one side I had a glimpse of the wiring in the corridor’s ceiling. I narrowly missed him and his tools as I aimed for the corridor wall directly beside him. When I hit the wall, I pushed off again toward the center. It put me right back at the handholds on the opposite side of him. I reached for the next handhold and kept going. I called over my shoulder, “See you later!”

  “Good-bye, Tyce,” he said. “Be careful!”

  Careful? From my wheelchair all my life I had watched people walk or run past me on strong, healthy legs. To me this was the closest I would ever get to any kind of real freedom outside of my wheelchair. It was too much fun for me to worry about being careful.

  A much darker thought hit me as I continued to swing from handhold to handhold.

  If the spaceship never made it to Earth, how much would it matter if I was careful or not?

  “What’s that?” Ashley asked once I reached our computer station. She had her own comp-board in front of her, screen flipped open.

  “Regulation jumpsuit,” I said. I had folded the blue jumpsuit across my right arm. “Picked it up on the way here.” I decided I wouldn’t tell Ashley about my run-in with Dad. She and I had enough other things to think about.

  “I know it’s a jumpsuit. Why do you have it?”

  “If you wanted to know why, you should have asked that in the first place.”

  “Tyce!” She flashed her dark eyes at me.

  “Ashley!” I said, imitating her.

  She sighed and shook her head. “I guess I’ll be the mature one and move right along to the serious business and tell you about the rest of the interviews.”

  “Sure,” I said, still grinning. I was in a great mood. And she would find out why very soon.

  “I managed to speak to everyone else,” Ashley said. “As it turns out, I didn’t discover anything unusual. But I know why Susan Fielding is going back to Earth so soon.�
�

  “Oh?” With my right hand, I grabbed the sleeve of the jumpsuit near the shoulder. With my left hand, I held the rest of the jumpsuit.

  “She needs some medical checkups. I couldn’t find out exactly what kind, but that’s what Jack Tripp was able to tell me when I interviewed him. And there doesn’t seem to be anything strange in what he told me about himself. What do you think we should do next since—?”

  I yanked as hard as I could. With a loud rip, the sleeve began to separate from the rest of the jumpsuit.

  “What are you doing?” Ashley asked.

  “Ripping off a sleeve.”

  “I can see that. But why are you—?”

  “If you wanted to know why, you should have asked that in the first place.”

  “Aaaaaarghh.”

  I grinned again. Yes, I was in a good mood. I knew exactly how we were going to prove Lance Evenson was behind this.

  I plucked at the loosened material in my hands. “When I’m finished with this, you’ll be ready to call me a genius.”

  I explained as I continued to unravel threads from the jumpsuit.

  And she, too, began to smile.

  CHAPTER 15

  Half an hour later, Ashley and I returned to the robot lab. Much as I wanted to rush through the checklist process, Ashley forced us to go slowly.

  Finally I was strapped in place, in darkness and silence.

  Then, as always, came the sensation of falling … falling ….

  My return to sight brought the striped shadows of the airvent cover of Lance Evenson’s bunk. Those shadows fell on the DVD-gigarom that was taped to the inside of the vent.

  I brought one of the ant-bot arms up in front of me. I waggled it, simply because I never got tired of working a robot through the nerve impulses sent by my brain. Incredible as the ant-bot’s engineering might be, I didn’t intend to try to move the disc or carry it.

  No, even here in the weightlessness of outer space, that would take something else.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  Just as the air current had earlier sent the ant-bot floating down here to the vent cover, it now brought something else.

  Thread.

  Or, more precisely, one thread tied to another thread tied to another and another and another. I had taken threads from the jumpsuit and knotted them to form a long, long single thread. Then, to make sure the air current would bring the thread down the vent, I had tied one end to a small square of paper.

  Through the video lens of the ant-bot, I watched that small square approach like a sail ahead of a breeze in one of the pirate movies I loved to watch. The thread trailing it was invisible in the darkness of the vent shaft. But when the paper reached the vent cover, I was easily able to grab the piece of thread in the tiny robot hand. I pulled it loose from the piece of paper.

  The only tricky part would come next.

  Because of the lack of gravity, I could not simply let go of the vent cover and expect to drop. I would have to launch the ant-bot in the direction of the disc.

  Seconds later I made the leap. Although I covered only about six inches, to the ant-bot it was like a jump that covered five football fields.

  As the ant-bot floated through the air, I tied one end of the thread around the ant-bot’s other arm. Though it was just a thread of fabric, it seemed like a rope. When I landed, I had the rope securely lashed. Then both of the ant-bot’s arms were free for use.

  There wasn’t much surface on the disc small enough for the ant-bot to actually get a grip on it. But it didn’t matter. I had aimed my jump well enough to land beside the single strand of tape that held the disc against the inside surface of the vent.

  First I pried a small part of the edge of the tape off the disc. I unwrapped the thread from the ant-bot arm and pushed it against the sticky underside of the tape. I tugged. It wasn’t much of a tug. A human hand would have easily ripped the thread loose. But the ant-bot didn’t have that kind of strength, and the thread remained in place.

  Then I began the longer task of cutting the tape where it joined between the disc and the vent.

  The ant-bot hands were tiny, and the tape seemed as thick as a slice of bread might look to human eyes. But since ant-bot hands were made of titanium, it was easy to claw through the tape.

  When I finished cutting the tape on both sides of the disc, I had one last task.

  I pulled on the thread to get a little slack. I looped it a couple of times around the ant-bot’s neck. Then in my mind I shouted, “Stop!”

  Instantly I woke up back in the robot lab.

  Ashley and I stood in the corridor with a vent cover hanging beside us.

  She held a piece of thread in her hands and slowly pulled.

  Because there was no gravity, I knew she didn’t feel the weight of the disc on the other end of the thread. But she kept pulling, trusting that the ant-bot had done the job properly.

  As she kept reeling in thread, the disc appeared. She grabbed it with her hand and gave it to me.

  I loosened the thread where the ant-bot had stuck it to the tape on the disc. Hanging from the thread was the tiny body of the ant-bot.

  “Mission accomplished.” I grinned. “One disc. And one recovered ant-bot.”

  “You mean step one accomplished,” she corrected me. “Now we need to find out what’s on the disc.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “This is it.” I waved my opened comp-board at Ashley. “In five minutes, we’re going to have all the answers.”

  We were back in the entertainment cluster, alone. It had taken hardly any time to retrieve my comp-board from Blaine Steven.

  “How can you know that? You haven’t even opened the disc yet.”

  “I’m not talking about just the disc.” It was in the front pocket of my jumpsuit. All I needed to do was fit it into the discport on the right-hand side of the comp-board, and we’d find out what was on it. But first the other information. “Blaine Steven had my comp-board for the last hour. He—”

  “Blaine Steven? You let him access your computer?”

  I explained why. “See this,” I said as I clicked on the file with my questions for him. The words sprang into shape on my screen. I leaned over to let Ashley share my view of it. “I put in the questions and he’s given the answers.”

  I read it silently with her.

  Why do you think Dr. Jordan and this mastermind person want you dead?

  Because I know how the Terratakers work. I know too much about them. I can expose them and testify against them. They don’t care whether I ever intend to do anything against them. They will get rid of me simply because it is a safe thing to do. I was never afraid of them when I was on Mars because they needed me when I was director. But as I get closer to Earth, I am more afraid. Especially because I hear Dr. Jordan having conversations in the bunk beside me. I can’t hear the words; I just know that someone is visiting him late at night. The mastermind. I know that if they wanted me to continue to be part of the rebels, the mastermind would come to my bunk too. But they are leaving me alone.

  Why would they want everyone else on the ship dead? Because it is safer for them. If they escape the Moon Racer, they will be picked up by a rebel space shuttle. Dr. Jordan won’t be arrested then. The mastermind will be able to disappear into the underworld of the Terratakers, who are spread across the world. And if they are the only survivors, no one will ever be able to contradict them.

  Why should I believe anything you tell me?

  If you don’t believe me now, you will when something starts going wrong with the Moon Racer. If it isn’t an explosive device, which is my first guess, it will be something else. I hope I’m wrong about all of this. If we make it to Earth safely, then you can laugh at me as the military officials arrest me.

  Why should Dad or I help you?

  I have many, many secrets that can help the World United Federation defeat the rebels before they find a way to start a new world war. That is their goal. Once a war begins an
d the confederation of countries splits up, they can take advantage of the confusion and of the weaker countries.

  I was about to comment when, Bing! The tinny noise from my comp-board jolted me away from the words on the screen.

  My e-mail announcement. Mail had just arrived.

  “Hang on,” I said to Ashley. I clicked a few buttons on the keyboard to open my e-mail. “Hopefully it’s from Rawling. That will give us even more information.”

  The e-mail symbol jumped into the foreground of the screen, leaving my question-and-answer interview with Blaine Steven in the background.

  I double-clicked to open the new e-mail.

  “Yep,” I said. “Rawling.”

  From: “Rawling McTigre”

  To: “Tyce Sanders”

  Sent: 03.06.2040, 4:13 p.m.

  Subject: Re: questions

  Tyce,

  I still don’t have anything to tell you that might be of help. I’ll keep looking, however, and get to you immediately if I learn anything.

  Rawling

  P.S. The elbow is getting better. I know it hurts me a lot less than it hurt other people in my old hockey days on Earth!

  “I knew it!” I pointed at the screen. “I just knew it!”

  “If you get any more excited, you’ll start to drool.” Ashley frowned. “And I don’t see much to get excited about.”

  “He normally signs off differently.” I told Ashley about how Rawling always ended his e-mails to me with “carpe diem, Rawls.”

  “So he forgot,” Ashley said. “He is director of the Mars Dome. Plus, he’s got to be worried about this spaceship. With everything else happening on Mars …”

  “He’s also taking a lot longer than usual to reply.”

  “Because he’s taking all that time to try to find answers for you.”

  I shook my head. “The Rawling I know would fire off an immediate e-mail explaining that it might take a while to get what he needs.”