“Thanks,” he said with a wide grin. “I guess I was lucky everything fell into place,” he added, trying to be modest.
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” said Regan. “You couldn’t have played that any better.”
Ryan couldn’t help but smile proudly. He had expected it to be fairly simple to trick the mercenary into standing exactly where he and Regan had stood when they were blasted by the ultrasonic generator. He knew if they appeared desperate to be standing there when the machine was turned on, the suspicious Davidenko would demand to take up this position himself. The hard part had been tricking him into letting Ryan strip him of his ability to feel pain. If not for this, the instant they turned on the ultrasonic generator he would have shot them both and fled the building, screaming in agony, just as he and his sister had done. Luckily for them, they had felt the crushing, blinding pain the generator had caused immediately—not that it had seemed so lucky at the time.
“That alien medical device is amazing,” said Ryan. “Beyond amazing. The ultrasonic energy must have been practically vibrating his skull off and he didn’t feel a thing. He had absolutely no idea he was being attacked up until the time he passed out.”
“I guess pain really does have its purposes,” said Regan, beaming happily. “You’ll have to be sure to tell your teacher all about it if we ever get out of this.”
Her brother smiled. “Do you think that’s why she taught it—so her students could use this knowledge to knock out machine gun carrying mercenaries?”
“Of course,” said Regan, grinning. “What other reason could there be?”
Ryan paused. “Well, we’ve accomplished the first part of the plan,” he noted. “We’re free again. But we have less than two hours to free the rest of the team and save Mom and Dad. Our chances were one in a billion. Now, I’d guess they’ve improved to one in a million.”
“I don’t know, Ryan,” said his sister, her eyes twinkling. “They might just be a lot better than you think.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because while we were driving, I think I really did figure out where to find a force-field nullifier. If we’re lucky, we might just have a bargaining chip after all.”
CHAPTER 16
The Force-Field Nullifier
“Fantastic,” said Ryan. “But let’s take care of Davidenko before you tell me about it,” he advised. “I doubt he’ll be waking up anytime soon, but let’s not take chances.”
Together they rolled the lieutenant onto his stomach and pulled his arms behind him. While Ryan held his wrists and then his ankles together, Regan bound them tightly with zip-strips they had removed from his belt.
They decided not to take Davidenko’s assault rifle. Neither of them knew how to use it. If they tried, the weapon could easily prove to be more dangerous to them than to their enemies.
They removed Davidenko’s belt, stuffed with spare clips and an assortment of other gear. Regan quickly began examining the contents of the bulging black pouches clipped onto the belt while her brother searched the mercenary’s pockets and body. Ryan found a combat knife in a black-leather sheath strapped to the side of the soldier’s lower leg and removed it for possible future use. He also found the medical device Davidenko had taken from him and replaced it in his own pocket where it belonged.
Regan removed two small cylindrical tubes from a belt pouch. They resembled soda cans with clips protruding from their tops. She handed one to her brother. “Flashbangs,” she noted unnecessarily.
Ryan took one and nodded. These might be just what they needed for their next rescue attempt. Not only had they learned science from some of the greatest scientists of the day, Colonel Carl Sharp had taught them a thing or two about military equipment.
Stun grenades, also called flashbangs, were first used by the military in hostage rescue situations and were ideal for this purpose. These canisters were packed with a mixture of aluminum and potassium perchlorate—also known as flashpowder. Flashpowder was originally used in early flash cameras and by magicians, and was still used in fireworks and to create special effects for movies. This powder burnt very brightly and so quickly it seemed to “flash” out of existence. Flashbang grenades were not designed to cause any permanent damage, but like their name implied, simply to cause such an intensely bright flash and earsplitting bang that they would blind and deafen an enemy for about ten seconds.
While the rifle was of no use to the siblings, the knife and flashbangs might come in very handy.
Ryan found nothing else of interest, while Regan found only one additional useful item: a small stun gun that she slipped into her pocket. When fired, two small electrodes still attached by wires to the device would shoot out like dual harpoons. They would release an electrical charge capable of overloading the body’s electrical communication system, causing confusion and paralyzing muscles but not doing any permanent damage.
With Davidenko bound and their thorough inspection of his gear completed, Ryan was eager to hear what his sister had discovered.
Regan was confident of her logic, but she knew it wouldn’t be easy to convince her brother. She decided to get to the point fairly quickly and then go from there. She took a deep breath. “As we drove toward the zoo building,” she began, “I was thinking through the details of the rynow plan. How would we convince Davidenko to go through the portal to Walendam? How would we convince him to let us drive him in a tram once we arrived? That sort of thing.”
Ryan nodded. He had been doing the same thing.
“Davidenko would let us go anywhere we wanted, as long as he still thought we were trying to help his boss get through the force-field. So it was obvious that we just had to convince him that we were going to Walendam and taking a tram through the barrier to find a force-field nullifier. In case he didn’t believe us, I began thinking of arguments that would support our lie. And then I realized something,” she continued, shaking her head in wonder. “It wasn’t a lie. The trams on the zoo planets really are the answer. They each have nullifiers we can use to get through the Prometheus shield.”
Ryan shook his head and reacted exactly as she had known he would. “Dad already considered this and ruled it out,” he said, unable to completely hide his disappointment.
“Yes, but he’s never tested it,” pointed out Regan. “The more I thought through the arguments the more convinced I became that Dad is wrong,” she said bluntly. “I’m almost sure of it.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows. “In what way?” he said.
“We know the planets all have force-field barriers to protect visitors, and we know when you’re in a tram you can just drive right through them if you want to explore.”
Ryan nodded. “Right. That’s why Dad considered the idea in the first place.”
“But he didn’t consider it carefully enough. He measured the frequencies of the shields on each planet and found they were all different. Different from each other and different from the Prometheus shield. Because of this he figured that even if there was some device on the tram—like an alien garage-door opener—used to cross a barrier on a given planet, it wouldn’t work here. He knew from his own work that only something with the exact opposite frequency from that of the force-field could create an opening. Just like our garage-door remote on Earth—it can’t open anyone else’s door.”
Regan paused to see if her brother had any questions.
“Go on,” he said.
“Also, while some planets have more trams than others, and they come in a variety of sizes, they all work the same way and have the same design. Dad was convinced the Qwervy wouldn’t go to all the trouble of having different nullifiers for every different planet. He figured it would be far simpler for them to engineer the force-field barriers themselves to detect trams and let them pass. When a tram approached, the barrier would detect it and create a hole in itself for a second to let it through. The technology for this would be in the force-field, not the tram. He was so sure of his reasoning, a
nd so busy, he never took the time to test it—besides, he had already created an opening in the Prometheus shield that was working really well.”
Ryan frowned. “He never did test his hypothesis, I’ll give you that. And he’s the one always saying how important that is. He says scientists can’t make assumptions. They need to test every hypothesis, even the ones they think are obvious.”
“Exactly,” said Regan. “That’s all I’m asking. That we test it. Because I’m convinced he’s wrong. I’ve thought about it a totally different way and come up with a totally different answer. Let me ask you this: why is there a force-field barrier around this city in the first place?”
“To protect it,” replied Ryan.
“From what?”
“From us.”
Regan shook her head. “Isn’t the shield really there to protect us? From the city? The Qwervy wanted to be absolutely certain we primitives wouldn’t get in and accidentally hurt ourselves. Just like locking a gun away from a bunch of kids protects them.”
Ryan nodded. She was right, of course.
“Dad thinks of the field as a two-way barrier,” she continued. “Made to be very difficult to open in either direction. And no one knows better than Dad how remarkable the barrier really is. He admits that it practically took a miracle for him to discover a way to break through it.” She paused. “But the city is off limits to all but a few authorized observers selected from the Qwervy and a few other advanced species. Wouldn’t they make it easy for themselves to exit? They’d make it nearly impossible to enter—to keep us out—but someone already inside should be able to get out, easily, anytime they wanted,” she insisted. “Maybe they would need to have a small device, or need to know a code, or maybe they would just have to ask the Teacher to create an exit telepathically.”
Ryan considered. He had never thought about it this way, but Regan was making perfect sense.
“One of the reasons Dr Harris agreed to let us be part of the Prometheus Project,” she continued, “is because kids aren’t afraid to consider ideas adults have been taught to think are crazy or impossible. All of Dad’s instincts and training tell him that the barrier is supposed to be just as difficult to exit as to enter. And human science could never build a tram garage-door opener that could work on thousands of force-field barriers, all with different frequencies. Human science was barely able to find a way through a single one, and even that took more equipment than could fit inside three trams. But so what?” she demanded. “Surely the Qwervy could pull it off. Just because Dad thinks it’s impossible, doesn’t mean the Qwervy can’t do it.”
She had a point there, Ryan had to admit. The Qwervy seemed to have a habit of doing the impossible. So why not? As he gazed at the fiery resolve in his sister’s green eyes, he knew he had to give her the benefit of the doubt. If he had learned anything during the past several months it was to trust his sister’s instincts.
He agreed to work with her to try to locate a nullifier, but only for thirty minutes or so. If they couldn’t find one in that period of time they would need to abandon their efforts and make another attempt to rescue the prisoners.
They hurried to the zoo and rushed through a portal. They found themselves on a planet with three visible moons. In its reddish sky floated balloon-like animals the size of whales. Resembling massive jellyfish in the sky, they drifted through dense swarms of gnat-like insects, miles and miles across, sucking up many millions of the tiny creatures as they passed, like living vacuum cleaners. The two visitors forced themselves to turn away from this remarkable spectacle. There was no time for sightseeing.
The siblings quickly found a tram and activated its holographic display. They examined every hologram in front of them for several minutes but couldn’t find anything that pointed them in the right direction.
“Time for plan B,” said Ryan, holding up the hammer he had brought with him. “You know what the scientists have told us: sometimes, the best way to learn what something does is to take it apart.”
“I think they meant taking it apart very gently and carefully, step by step,” quipped Regan with a grin. “Not bashing it to pieces with a hammer.”
Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “We’re in a hurry,” he said innocently. “Besides,” he added playfully, “I’m pretty sure all of humanity’s greatest scientific discoveries were made using a hammer.”
With that they began their experiment. They drove the tram to the edge of the force-field and Ryan demolished pieces of it, one at a time. After each piece was smashed, they would quickly determine if the tram could still drive through the barrier. If so, they would back it up, smash another piece, and try again.
After twenty minutes of this, Ryan smashed one of the last pieces remaining on the inside of the tram, a light-red crystal medallion extending down like a circular rear-view mirror.
Regan moved the tram forward.
It slammed into the barrier and stopped!
Regan tried again. Again, the barrier remained firmly intact.
Ryan’s eyes widened. Destroying the reddish crystal medallion destroyed the ability of the tram to get through the barrier. It was as simple as that.
Now full of excitement, they dashed back through the portal to the zoo and then on to another planet with a fully intact tram. They quickly spotted the same light-red crystal. This time, instead of destroying it, they worked to carefully remove it fully intact.
After only a few minutes it was free. Regan placed it in her pocket. She jumped from the tram and nodded to her brother.
Ryan moved the tram forward.
And it was stopped by the barrier!
Remarkable.
Regan approached the barrier with the crystal in her pocket. She took a step forward and walked right through the field.
It worked! There was a garage-door opener, and they had found it.
She had been right! The mechanism for lowering the barrier was in the tram rather than being in the barrier. They had found a nullifier. But the big question was, would it work on all the force-fields or only this particular one?
They returned to the zoo and hastily stepped through another portal to a different planet—this one covered with massive volcanoes—and a different barrier.
Regan approached the edge of the force-field with the medallion in her pocket. She took a deep breath and raised her foot to march forward. Would the medallion be able to nullify this field—one with a different frequency than the field it had just nullified?
There was only one way to find out.
“Cross your fingers, Ryan,” she said nervously, knowing that their fate might very well depend on what happened between her last footfall and her next.
CHAPTER 17
A Thorny Puzzle
Regan completed her stride, unhindered.
The barrier melted away before the medallion in her pocket.
“Unbelievable,” said Ryan. “Congratulations Regs. You know what this means, don’t you?”
Regan nodded. “It means we have our bargaining chip.”
“No,” he said, grinning. “It means Dad was wrong. About something scientific. That doesn’t happen every day.”
Regan laughed, even though they both knew that their father would be more proud of her than anyone for having proven him wrong.
Ryan glanced at his watch. “It’s been over five hours since Tezoc made his threat,” he reported. “We’d better go.”
They left the zoo and headed back toward the invaders’ headquarters in the Hauler with Ryan at the wheel. Even though they had been bluffing at the time, they had made the deal with Manning to try to find the nullifier, so they would return to him. Besides, they couldn’t be sure that Manning had even mentioned them to Tezoc. For all they knew, Tezoc would shoot them on sight if they went to where their father was working.
“Ryan,” said Regan worriedly after they had started out. “Finding the nullifier makes me nervous. I think we’ve been missing something about Tezoc. Something is wron
g. I can feel it. Something huge.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t know how to exit this city,” she replied. “I was right—there are fairly simple ways to exit. We found one. And I bet there are many others. Tezoc is just too smart, too good a planner, to have brought the wrong technology with him. He knows this city inside and out. And while his people aren’t as advanced as the Qwervy, they’re more advanced than we are. He was smart enough to break out of a prison no other of his kind had ever broken out of, but his entire plan might fail because he brought the wrong key with him?” She paused. “I just don’t believe that,” she finished emphatically.
Ryan thought about this and frowned. “So then what’s going on? What could he gain by pretending not to be able to leave here? Why threaten Dad?”
“We’re missing something important,” insisted Regan.
“Maybe we should back up and try to think about this from the very beginning.”
“Well, Tezoc captured Mom and Dad, and they said they wouldn’t be back in the city until about six this morning. So the invasion probably happened around then,” she said confidently.
Ryan nodded. “You’re right. But I wanted to go all the way back to last Friday, when we got the telepathic warning about an unauthorized entry. Eight days ago. Tezoc must have been the cause. I’ll bet that’s when he first arrived.”
Regan considered. They hadn’t thought about this for a while. “And also exactly when we stopped being able to feel the Teacher,” she reminded her brother.
“That’s right,” said Ryan, his eyes widening. For a week now they had been thinking the warning was a false alarm, after all. But it clearly was not. They needed to adjust their thinking. “So we were wrong: the warning wasn’t a malfunction due to the Teacher leaving. The Teacher must still have been here when Tezoc came through.”
“So did it decide to leave after it detected him?”
Captured (The Prometheus Project Book 2) Page 9
