“Any chance of breakfast?” Zeke asked Trixie as she sat down on a blanket with her meal.
“Get your own, you lazy earthworm.”
Zeke decided not to rise to the bait and started fumbling with the mac.
“Full Martian breakfast, please,” he said, bending over the robot and tripping a lever.
“Full Martian it is, Sir. Estimated time to service three minutes.”
The sound of Fitch’s plate crashing on stone shattered the morning calm.
“Don’t move!” he cried. But without thinking Zeke pirouetted on one foot to see the Failsafe gliding towards them. Its seven-foot bulk pulsed with heat.
“Target located. Destruct sequence initiated,” it said in Hesperian.
Fitch bounded over, coming between the monolith and Zeke. He grunted and puffed out his chest. The Failsafe wobbled slightly but continued approaching. The fire at its core blazed.
“Trixie, I need help!”
With a look of reluctance Trixie hastened to Fitch’s side. Her figure tensed as she too focused all her psychic energies.
“Under psychokinetic attack, two aggressors identified. Eradicate.”
Even as the alien machine spoke it began shuddering. Cracks appeared and multiplied.
BOOM!
The Failsafe exploded into fragments. The shockwave knocked all three teens off their feet, showering them in rubble.
Trixie sat up and waited for the smoke to clear.
“Boys, we need to go—now!”
The note of fear in her normally fearless voice was unmistakeable.
The ground was alive with movement. The fragments were rolling back, towards the scorched site of the explosion. They began jumping on top of each other. The Failsafe was reassembling.
“Go! Go! Go!” Fitch shouted.
They leapt to their feet and dived into the MUV.
“But the equipment?” Zeke protested.
“No time,” Fitch hollered.
“Escape protocol!” Trixie shrieked at the drive-matrix.
“Wait for me!” wailed the cookomac, wobbling after them on tiny castors. Its pleas fell on deaf ears. Doors slammed. The engine roared. With squealing tyres and clouds of dust the vehicle accelerated. Zeke looked back as the orange, marbled boulder arose over the clutter of the camp, its pieces reuniting and its fractures sealing. The car screeched around an outcrop of basalt and the camp vanished from view.
Chapter Seventeen
Further South
The car drove for an hour at full throttle. Trixie checked the rear view mirror for the millionth time.
“Nothing. Stop the car.”
Zeke and Fitch exchanged confused looks as the MUV slowed down.
“Open back left passenger door. Unfasten safety harness.”
The car obeyed. Zeke’s door swung open and his seatbelt un-clicked and retracted.
Trixie turned to Fitch.
“That thing wants Hailey. I say let it have him.”
Her eyes flashed and Zeke flew from the car. He landed on the bedrock with a painful thump. The door slammed shut and the car roared off.
“Come back!” he cried desperately, leaping to his feet and giving chase.
The MUV only travelled a few yards before skidding to another stop. This time the front door opened. This time Trixie Cutter fell from the vehicle. The MUV reversed in a squeal of rubber. The back door reopened.
“Come on,” Fitch said, extending his hand.
Zeke jumped in.
“Why do we need her anyway?” he asked as the car started off.
Before Fitch could answer the MUV jolted, lifting up onto its front wheels. The back wheels were spinning uselessly in the air. Both boys glanced through the rear window. Trixie stood with her hands on hips and a triumphant smile.
“Frankly, she’s outgrowing her usefulness,” Fitch said coldly. He climbed out of the car and stomped back towards the tall, thin figure. Zeke scrambled after him.
Fitch and Trixie came face to face, like cowboys about to shoot it out. Fitch raised his fist and waved a knuckle.
Why does he keep doing that? Zeke wondered.
Trixie let out a long, mocking laugh.
“That trick won’t work on me. Once you know how it works it has no power.”
And what is she on about?
“Here’s another old trick,” Fitch growled. “It’s called smashing your head in.”
A large stone, the size of a chair, levitated up from the soil. Trixie crooked a little finger and a heftier specimen sprang up. The adversaries glared at each other, sparks spitting from their faces. Neither spoke. Seconds ticked by.
Oh, Zeke thought. They’re talking telepathically. But what are they saying?
Their eyes dulled and both rocks thudded to the ground.
“Agreed, so let’s go before that rockbot catches up,” Fitch said.
In silence all three returned to the car and resumed their journey. After a while Trixie spoke.
“In case you’re curious, Earthworm. Fitch asked me along because of my links with Ptolemy Cusp.”
Zeke’s mouth dropped.
“You know him?”
“Sure, we often do business. He’s stocking up the Freetown armoury. I’m, um, helping him with that.”
Zeke scowled.
“You mean, you’re smuggling weapons onto Mars.”
“Now and then, yes. Between classes and homework.”
Zeke thought for a moment.
“If you’re gun-running from Earth, you must have mariners helping you. For the translocation to Mars.”
She giggled.
“We’re not all goodie-two-shoes devoted to the Cosmic Migration. Some of us have more humble interests. One more year and I’m out of the Chasm. I plan to be a trillionairess by then.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to rob a bank?” Fitch asked with a grin.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it. But Earth’s banks have the best anti-mariner device in nature. A planetary magnetic field.”
“Try the Martian banks.”
“Those? They don’t have enough money. This is a very poor planet. That’s why Cusp needs my help.”
“I don’t understand,” Zeke said.
Trixie threw him a haughty sneer.
“Cusp is the leader of the Freetown. He also now heads the Unprotectorate; an alliance of settlements that refuse the protection of Earth’s sovereign nations. Everything always boils down to taxes in the end. The Martian true-borns and even a lot of the immigrants want to keep their money on Mars.”
“Politics! You’ve lost me already,” Fitch grumbled, shifting his attention to the endless rockscape outside the car. Trixie went on.
“They say there’s a war coming, between Tithonium Central and the Unpro.”
Zeke stared deep into Trixie’s sapphire-blue eyes and saw bloodshed. A vague image of fighting, screaming, of people running, and not just from guns. There were also tentacles and gaping ravenous mouths. The picture lasted a nanosecond and was gone.
Zeke shivered.
“So you’re not going to serve an apprenticeship and—”
“Go Deep Side with a far-ship full of whinging colonists? Whatever for? The solar system’s bursting with moons and space stations, all without a shred of magnetism. Think of the money-making opportunities for a girl like me.”
Zeke grimaced in disgust. Trixie laughed. But the laughter died on her cherry-pink lips.
“Anyway, don’t you think it’s odd that no one has ever come back from deep space?”
Zeke sat up.
“Yes, I do.”
Trixie paused for a moment.
“There are rumours, among the fifth years.”
“Rumours? About what?”
Trixie looked away.
“Oh, I don’t know. Silly stuff. Forget it.”
Fitch looked at them.
“Lutz knows something. But it’s so heavily protected inside her brain that I couldn’t get close
to it. She’s got some kind of technological implant, a super-firewall blocking any telepathic intrusion.”
Zeke looked at his friend with astonishment. Fitch hastily continued.
“Only about that though. The information on your father was easy to reach.”
Fitch nodded at Trixie as though wanting her help.
“What about that Mariner Chinook? He wouldn’t go Deep Side,” she said, changing the subject.
“He’s a coward,” Fitch scoffed.
“He is not!” Zeke snapped. The conviction in his voice surprised even him.
“Whatever,” Fitch replied.
For a few minutes Zeke was lost in thought.
“So what’s he like then? This Ptolemy Cusp?” Fitch asked.
The slightest tint of red coloured Trixie’s cheeks.
“Very handsome. And very clever. He used to be a trader. Now he’s a warrior. Puts his trust in the wrong people though.”
“You got that right,” Fitch said and guffawed loudly.
“You mean Isla the Incisor,” Zeke said.
Trixie drew back.
“How very perceptive of you, Earthworm. Yep, that spoilt little rich girl is his greatest weakness.”
“Rich?” Zeke said in surprise.
“Oh yes, she’s the daughter of the Swedish ambassador to Mars. She ran away from Tithonium at just sixteen. Hiked across Mariners Valley and joined the Freetown. Talk about persistent. Now she’s his right hand man—”
“Woman. Right hand woman,” Fitch corrected her.
“One day she’s going to feel the back of my hand,” Trixie muttered.
“But what have they got to do with my father?” Zeke asked.
Fitch moved nearer.
“Zeke,” he said. “You’re looking very tired. Very sleepy.”
Zeke felt his energy draining away.
“You’re right,” he replied. “Time for a nap.”
Zeke curled up in a ball and closed his eyes.
Chapter Eighteen
Melas Chasma
When Zeke woke, he found himself under a blanket, the car filled with cool yellow sunlight. The sound of a man singing drifted in through an open window. Zeke lay as still as a stone, listening to the words of the song. They didn’t quite make sense, something about sugarcane and tidal waves, and the singer sounded afraid and determined at the same time. Zeke pictured a lone figure confronting a tsunami or an army of tigers. He wondered if he could ever be so brave. Then he stretched, yawned and sat up.
The music was coming from Trixie’s M-pod. The blonde thug was heating up a frozen meal on the bonnet of the MUV. Now they no longer had the cookomac this was their only way of heating food.
Three days had passed since the encounter with the Failsafe. They had journeyed south with few breaks, even at night. The cramped, uncomfortable sleeping arrangements seemed preferable to the risk of incineration.
Zeke passed most of the trip in a deep slumber. Whenever he came to, Trixie was cursing the boys and their smelly feet, or Fitch was grumbling about Trixie’s obsession with her looks. He didn’t know why he was so tired, but he was happy to miss their endless bickering.
“Oi, Earthworm, you hungry or what?” she called out.
“Famished,” he replied.
She opened the car door and thrust a plastic plate of lukewarm Martian beans into his hands. He looked up at her doll-like face and realised she was smiling at him.
“Thanks, Mum,” he said, trying not to giggle.
“Mum!” Trixie shrieked.
Zeke flinched. To his surprise Trixie didn’t slap him.
“I never knew being a mum was such hard work,” she said lightly. “Maybe my mother isn’t so bad, after all.”
“Your mother? What’s she like then?”
“Oh a real dragon, always nagging me to do better.”
“Sounds tough,” Zeke remarked.
“Well, thank the cosmos for Dad. I’m his little princess and always will be.”
Their eyes met for a moment. Then she seemed to remember something and the smile gave way to a scowl.
“You better eat that, you ingrate.”
She turned with a flick of her ponytail and stomped off.
“Where’s Fitch?” Zeke called after her.
“I’m here.”
Zeke glanced over his shoulder. Fitch was behind the car, examining Zeke’s bike. He pulled Albie’s DVD from the hard drive and lifted it up to the light.
Zeke stiffened. He didn’t like anyone fiddling with his mountain bike. Perhaps Fitch read his thoughts. He slotted the silver circle back where it belonged.
“No offence, Zeke. Just having a nosy.”
Zeke shrugged.
“Whatever.”
“So, Albie was a gift from your father?”
“Sort of. He left it behind and Mum gave it to me. Part of some project he was working on.”
“Neat. And this is the original?”
“No, that sank into a quicksand along with Mariner Maier’s Glow-Worm.”
“I saw that in your memories. You stole a teacher’s solar scooter and went off in search of the Chinese girl.”
“Pin-mei. She’d been abducted—”
“Yes, I know all about that too. But you downloaded Albie’s entire contents onto this copy?”
“Sure, several copies. What of it?”
Fitch stroked his chin.
“No reason.”
“Hurry up!” Trixie shouted. She was sitting on a nearby rock daintily picking at her beans.
“Hurry up?” Zeke replied.
Fitch slipped into the back of the car, beside him.
“Yuri-Gagarin Freetown is a couple of klicks away. Trixie and I thought it best to leave the MUV here and enter on foot. Quiet like.”
“And then?”
“Trust me.”
A crafty smirk spread across the moon boy’s pale face.
An hour later they were tramping across the red desert. Zeke could see the tops of the white bio-spheres in the distance, the oldest part of the settlement. These had started off as a Russian research station back in the late twenty-first century. Zeke tried to imagine what it was like for those early explorers. As Mars was an airless deathtrap in those days, Zeke assumed they rarely left their sealed environment. It seemed a very claustrophobic life.
“Now!”
Three burly men leaped out from the landscape of scattered rocks. A young woman with cropped ginger hair dived onto the ground. All four aimed huge rifles at the teenagers.
“Fire!” cried the woman again.
“Wait!” Trixie shrieked.
The weapons, bulky contraptions made of coils and cylinders, illuminated and flared. Trixie and Fitch cowered and covered their faces. The air shimmered and fizzled. But nothing happened, or so it seemed.
“Is that your best shot, Isla?” Trixie cackled.
The ginger-haired woman grinned and her sea-green eyes sparkled. Zeke cleared his throat.
“Those are ferromagnetic guns. They soaked us in magnetised ions.”
“What!” Fitch bellowed.
Isla the Incisor stood up and dusted down her combat fatigues.
“A necessary precaution, your psychic powers will be cancelled out for a few hours. Security, you understand.”
Fitch didn’t understand. His chest began heaving. His lungs struggled to breathe. A nasty purple pallor flooded his face.
“You witch!” he screamed and hurled himself at Isla.
Fitch rammed the knuckle of his forefinger repeatedly against her shoulder. For a moment Isla stared at him in disbelief. Then she brought the side of her hand down against his neck in a swift karate chop. The boy collapsed onto the dirt, gasping like a beached fish.
“You were expecting us?” Trixie asked.
“Absolutely.”
A glimmer of insight dawned on Trixie’s perfect features.
“The soothsayer?”
Isla nodded.
“She told me
three thieving mariners would come creeping into the settlement.”
Zeke, who was helping the sobbing Fitch Crawley to his feet, stared in astonishment.
“What do you mean, thieves?”
Trixie Cutter looked at the sky. Fitch lowered his tear-filled gaze. Isla fixed Zeke with a harsh stare.
“Ah, the slipperiest trickster this side of Olympus Mons. Don’t pretend. You’re here to steal the orbs.”
Chapter Nineteen
Biosphere Two
“Move!” Isla shouted, prodding Zeke in the back with her ferromagnetic rifle. The entrance to the white spherical building slid across and they filed inside. It closed behind them, sealing off the Freetown’s dusty streets. They were in a small chamber that had once been an airlock. The inner door opened to reveal a huge hall.
A Persian rug led them across the chamber, past display units stuffed with antique ceramics, to a grand wooden throne, engraved with dragons and space rockets. A broad-shouldered East Asian man, dressed in a black silk kimono, sat talking to a servant. The underling was reading out figures from a magnopad. Zeke realised it was a crop report. On a planet where food was in short supply, farming was always the focus of attention. The man on the throne was Ptolemy Cusp. As soon as the great leader saw Zeke and the others he dismissed the servant with a regal wave.
“Approach,” he boomed.
Zeke, Trixie and Fitch crossed the rug, closely followed by Isla and two of her guards. Ptolemy winked at Isla as they halted at his feet. His face was round, with bright black eyes and a strong chin.
“So our psychic intelligence is correct,” he said.
“Ptolemy, y-you’ve got us all wr-wrong,” Trixie stammered. Zeke’s jaw dropped. This was the second time he’d seen her in any mood other than ruthless confidence, but it was still a novelty.
Ptolemy raised a hand and Trixie immediately fell silent.
“Miss Cutter, let’s not play games. Life on Mars is too short.”
The great man glared at his three captives. Trixie and Fitch stared down at the threads of the rug with miserable expressions. Fitch hadn’t spoken since their capture. He was white with shock. Zeke’s gaze bounced between his friends and Cusp. Questions were bubbling inside him. For some reason, the blast of magnetic ions had galvanised his brain cells. The stupor he’d been feeling for the last three days was fading. Now he was trying to piece everything together. Fitch and Trixie had brought him to Yuri-Gagarin Freetown to meet with Ptolemy Cusp, as apparently he had secret information on Zeke’s father’s whereabouts. Fitch had found this out while scanning Principal Lutz’s brain. But now they stood before the Freetown leader accused of stealing. Had Trixie double-crossed them?
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