Defenders of Destiny, book one, the Discovery of Astrolaris

by Brenton Barwick

  Chapter Six

  “A Test Try, Not A Test Fly.”

  “When are we going to take the robot out for a test try? Huh Dad?” queried Joseph.

  “Yeah, Dad. You said we’d take it out after investigating the interior,” pressed Sharianna.

  Mom looked across the breakfast table at Dad as he looked up from his notes. “Why not today?” she asked. “I don’t think we can learn another thing until we experiment some more.”

  Dad glanced out the window toward the tarp covering the big hole in the side of the barn and the hole in the roof that resulted from his last attempt to experiment with the cabin controls.

  A wry smile spread across Joseph’s face as he interrupted Dad’s pondering: “At least we know two of the controls: The arm...and firing the laser beam.”

  “And it’s a good thing the robot was on its back and facing the sky, or someone’s house might have been destroyed with that laser,” observed Dad.

  “But it only put an eight inch hole in the roof,” argued Mom.

  “Only an eight inch hole?” Dad got a worried look on his face as he contemplated the damage that could be done with the robot, if the wrong people gained control of it.

  “Let’s take it out of the barn and experiment in the yard. That way it won’t destroy the barn,” Sharianna suggested.

  “It’s forty-seven feet tall! Someone would surely see it,” Dad countered.

  “That’s with its toes pointed. I’ll bet it’s not more than… forty-two feet standing flat footed,” returned Joseph. “That’s only about the same length as our school bus.”

  “That’s still taller than a three story building,” argued Dad.

  “But our trees give us some privacy. Besides, our nearest neighbors are a quarter of a mile away. And the robot does not make any noise when it moves,” reasoned Mom.

  Dad declared, with a tone of finality: “Unless you smash something; besides, I’m sure you could still see the head through the tree tops. What if someone were to come over? It’s just too risky.”

  Joseph looked at Mom, then back to Sharianna with a look of: ‘do something.’

  “What about at night? The robot looks almost black. Nobody could see it unless they were right here in the yard…and we could lock the front gate,” begged Sharianna in her sweetest voice, while looking at her dad with her big green eyes and her beautiful smile.

  He melted: “I guess that would work,” he conceded, all his defensive posture now dissipated. “Think you kids can stay up till two am?”

  “Dad, this is more exciting than Christmas!” exclaimed Sharianna.

  “And you can’t stay up for that,” Joseph teased.

  “You’re not supposed to,” she retorted.

  At dusk, Thomas locked the front gate, then hitched up the trailer and pulled the robot out of the barn. He didn’t want to take the chance of waking any neighbors with the noise of the dump truck in the middle of the night. He looked around and was glad they had planted so many trees years earlier. The large barn blocked most of the view of the neighbors from one side, while the trees created a pretty good screen with only a few gaps on the other sides. He was pretty confident that with the cover of night they would not be detected.

  Sophia came out of the house carrying grocery bags, with Sharianna carrying her sleeping bag and a large soft body pillow, almost as large as herself.

  Dad looked at them with a quizzical look.

  “If we have to wait till two, then I’m going to be comforta-ble,” Sharianna emphasized.

  “There’s four more bags on the kitchen table,” directed Mom, “and grab my purse.”

  “We’re just going to experiment a little with the controls,” groaned Dad.

  “Just a few snacks and some food for breakfast; I’m going to try out the kitchen in the morning,” she replied, as she walked past him without pausing. “What use is a kitchen if there is no food in it?” she reasoned.

  As Dad was heading for the house, Joseph emerged carrying a huge fluffy beanbag. Dad held out both his hands with a silent expression of: ‘Now what are you doing?’

  Joseph tossed the bean chair into his hands. “Thanks Dad,” he said, as he turned back into the house to get his iPod.

  “This won’t even fit through the door!” exclaimed Dad.

  “You just have to stuff it through. It’ll fit,” called Joseph, as the screen door closed behind him.

  Finally, everyone had everything they thought they might need for the night. Dad slipped into one of the captain’s chairs and continued to study his notes, comparing them with the buttons, switches and controls.

  “What’s first?” asked Sharianna, as she sat in the other captain’s chair.

  “I think I have figured out how to make it stand up. Then we will try taking a few slow steps and maybe try out the hands to see if we can pick something up.”

  “Then we’ll fly?” she asked eagerly.

  “NO. No flying.”

  “Daaaaad…”

  “Nope. Nooo flying.”

  “Awwww,” she moaned in a disappointed, begging voice.

  “We need to master ground travel first.”

  “Hey, what about Percy?” asked Joseph, through a mouthful of Doritos as he emerged from the hallway.

  “I’m not going to carry him down the ladder again,” com-plained Dad.

  “You only carried him about halfway down,” retorted Sharianna, with a tiny restrained laugh.

  Dad smiled, “Okay, I’m not going to fall down the ladder with him again.”

  “You won’t need to. Once the robot is off the trailer, we’ll be able to walk right out the ankle door, onto the foot,” Joseph replied.

  Dad looked at the view screen on the wall where he could see Percy with a very sad looking face sitting at the bottom of the ladder. “Okay, but you’re in charge of him.”

  Joseph stepped to the doorway. “Here boy, come on Percy!”

  Percy seemed to smile as he jumped up and began climbing the ladder. Thomas always marveled how easy it was to read Percy’s emotions. “And some people say animals don’t have emotions!”

  When Percy reached the top, Joseph tossed him a Dorito.

  “I think that dog eats more people food than dog food,” observed Mom from the doorway. “Anyone else want some more people food? Nachos? Chips?” Three ‘yes’s’ and one bark told her she hadn’t wasted her time.

  “What time is it?” Joseph asked.

  “About eleven,” replied Mom.

  “T-minus three hours to launch,” he announced. “Do we really have to wait until two am?”

  “T-minus three hours to walk,” countered Sharianna. “We’re not going to fly it tonight,” she explained in response to Joseph’s questioning expression.

  “I thought we were going to test fly it,” stated Joseph, looking from Sharianna to Dad.

  “No, I agreed to a test try, not a test fly,” Dad corrected.