John reached through the plastic slats and patted the Hammerhead. “This baby is small enough that it is launched from space. Yep, we take it up in a shuttle. That means all of its fuel is there for space travel. And you notice how small it is. That’s because it only has room for the onboard computers and one pilot in a space suit. Once again it cuts back the need for extra fuel. Think of it this way. No extra weight or waste is put into it for life support. The space suit already has it. A person can live three days on the surface of Mars in a space suit. So a person can live three days in this thing.” He paused. “Of course, no one expects a pilot to be in there that long. The Hammerhead was built for high-speed missions. Like a race car, not a motor home.”
“It will really go 15,000 miles an hour?” I asked.
“More. Far more.” John sounded as proud of it as if he had designed it himself. “When you throw a rock here in the dome, it accelerates with the initial force. Then gravity and the friction of air slow it down. In space there’s no gravity. No friction. If you throw a rock in space, it will never lose that initial acceleration. The nozzles of the Hammerhead are extremely efficient. They compress the fuel burning and create tremendous pushing power. Whatever force you apply with this in outer space keeps accelerating. Think of it like a rock that gains speed as you drop it from a tall building. Say you’re already at 15,000 miles per hour. If you gun it with another burst of nozzle flares, it will accelerate another 15,000 miles per hour and keep that speed of 30,000 miles per hour.”
“And so on?” I asked.
“Yep! There’s nothing to slow it down, ever, except reverse nozzle thrusts. The only limitations you have are fuel limitations. I believe—” he cupped his face with his right hand and stared thoughtfully past Rawling and me—“if you accelerated this until all your fuel was gone, you’d be at roughly 1.5 million miles per hour.” He laughed. “Not that anyone would ever want to do that. And, of course, you wouldn’t be able to find a way to stop. Unless you ran into something.”
Very funny, I thought. He wouldn’t be the pilot. As Rawling had told me a dozen times, the Hammerhead had been designed to be flown by someone with virtual-reality skills and the bioimplant in the spine to translate those skills into actual flight. Even if I would be doing it by remote, running into something wasn’t a pleasant thought.
“You are certainly knowledgeable about this,” Rawling said to John. “Especially for someone who didn’t even know about the existence of the Hammerhead until yesterday.”
John beamed. “Thank you. It helped that I was able to spend most of last evening going through the technical manual on it. I’m going to be the one helping Dr. Jordan. He’s the expert who helped design and test this back on Earth.”
Dr. Jordan. Ashley’s father. Strange that he’d kept this a secret so long. And that Ashley, if she did know about it, hadn’t mentioned it to me.
Or maybe it wasn’t so strange. She did seem secretive at times about anything that happened back on Earth.
But I didn’t have time to chase those thoughts now.
“One thing,” Rawling said thoughtfully. “You mentioned a pilot in a space suit. I understood from the Science Agency’s last communication that Tyce would handle this the same way he handles the robot. By remote. Why would there be a need for a pilot on board?”
John frowned. “Then someone yanked your chain, Dr. McTigre. There’s no possible way to pilot this except by having someone on board. I mean, the range of this ship far exceeds any remote. So what happens if the ship gets on the other side of a planet like Mars? No remote is going to be able to send or receive information.”
“You’re telling me,” Rawling said, “that Tyce is actually going to be inside this space torpedo?”
“No other way,” John answered. “Why did you think otherwise?”
“Dr. Jordan didn’t once tell me that,” Rawling said, angry. “He implied that Tyce would fly it the same way he handles the robot. It’s one thing to let Tyce try new technology and another to make him a guinea pig.”
“Look,” John said, “Dr. Jordan headed a team of Earth scientists who designed this specifically for a pilot like Tyce. Now we’re facing that killer comet. If Tyce doesn’t fly it, who will? And if no one flies it, what happens to the dome?”
Rawling didn’t say anything else. Because we all knew the answers—but didn’t want to hear them.
Back in the lab, Rawling shook his head. “I don’t know about this.”
“Is there a choice?” I asked. “Would you rather I get killed in the dome when the comet pieces hit Mars? Or would you like to give me a chance to save myself and everyone else?”
“I don’t know if there’s a choice,” he answered, “and I’m angry about it. I’m angry that no one told me about the comet until a week ago. I’m angry that no one told me that Dr. Jordan was part of this. I’m angry that until a week ago I didn’t even know the Hammerhead existed under this dome.” He rubbed his eyes. “And I’m angry that there’s probably a hundred other things that have been kept from me.” He gave me a tight smile. “I’m so angry now that I’m even more determined to stay as director and get to the bottom of all this.”
“Good,” I said.
I had some questions of my own, and I hoped they’d be answered during today’s flight-simulation program.
Rawling stared off into space briefly, then sighed. “Well, let’s get to business.” He pushed me in my wheelchair over to the bed and lifted me onto it. “Virtual reality today. That’s all. You’re not really going to be in space. You’re going to be part of a computer program test run. Remember that. Tonight we talk to your parents about the real thing.”
Sure, I thought as he strapped me into position. When we talk to my parents, they’ll come to the same conclusion: as much as they hate the idea of putting my life in danger, there’s really no choice. I’ll have to go out into the space beyond Mars in a tube barely longer and wider than my body. A tube that travels up to 1.5 million miles per hour. If I mess up, everyone on Mars and maybe everyone on Earth will die. Talk about pressure.
We went through the checklist without our usual joking around. Rawling adjusted the blindfold over my eyes and the headset over my ears.
Soon everything around me was dark. I was left alone with all my scary thoughts.
Somehow virtual reality wasn’t fun anymore.
Then I began to fall and fall and fall into the deep, deep black. …
CHAPTER 11
Silence. Monstrously thick silence.
And no sense of motion.
Rawling has told me that on Earth, when you’re in a car speeding down the highway, fence posts will snap past you, one by one, in a blur of speed that is both frightening and exciting. In space, however, the stars are at such vast distances that you can’t judge your speed in relation to their movement. That’s because there is none. Even the sun—a white, glaring ball of fire that looks like it’s in your back pocket—is 150 million miles from Mars.
Even worse, you feel no sense of weight—except during acceleration or deceleration. When you are cruising at over 15,000 miles an hour, you feel nothing but the beating of your heart. All around you, it is velvety black, broken only by stars.
That kind of aloneness is frightening.
I switched from human visual and human audio to the onboard computer receptors.
In the blink of an eye, it seemed I had been thrown into a crazed pinball machine.
Heat radar showed an approaching space torpedo coming in from my lower right. That radar then coordinated with signals bounced off the face of Mars to give me speed and location readings. I was already at 30,000 miles per hour, with impact radar warning me of harmless space dust. Then a clanging alert told me Phobos was one minute away—only 500 miles.
So this is the situation I’ve been given in today’s combat program, I thought, grinning. I had less than 30 seconds to make a decision.
But I’d already decided much earlier what I’d do. It
was something I’d only talked about with Ashley.
I flashed the surface of Phobos with my locator laser. At 300 miles, the laser pocked the small moon like a white dart. Yet I knew that in the blackness of outer space, the white target circle would have appeared like a neon billboard to the other pilot in this flight simulation program.
Twenty seconds to impact.
I kept the white laser circle steady at the center of the moon. It was only 18 miles wide, but at 200 miles away, it was starting to fill my visual.
My impact radars went into high alert.
Fifteen seconds.
I held off on the red laser beam that would destroy the moon.
Twelve seconds.
Ten.
In the remaining eight seconds, I did something that takes far longer to describe than accomplish. I rolled the Hammerhead hard left, taking a line that would almost scrape the side of the moon with my space torpedo. I vented all my flares, then shut down. Just as I’d done the first time I’d taken the Hammerhead into virtual-reality combat.
A heat mushroom would have filled the other pilot’s radar. And, just as before, I coasted out of that heat mushroom. Invisible and untrackable.
Only this time my own heat radar showed that the pilot had fallen for my trick. The heat tracks of the other torpedo had peeled off from Phobos and it had slowed, as if it were going to give Phobos a wide circle and wait for me to show up again.
I drifted for another 30 seconds. Right before peeling away from Phobos, I’d rolled hard enough so that my newly accelerated path would curve me back toward Mars. Actually, between Mars and the space torpedo that waited for me on the other side of Phobos.
That meant when I reignited, this time it would be me behind the other torpedo. I’d be in a perfect position to chase and destroy it.
Which I did, firing my virtual-reality laser weapon with exact timing.
The heat mushroom of the exploding space torpedo seemed to fill my whole radar screen. Just like my smile filled my entire face.
CHAPTER 12
“Let me tell you what I don’t like,” my dad said with an edge to his tone.
Dad, Mom, Rawling, and I sat in the common area of our minidome. Rawling had just explained to them what we’d learned today about the Hammerhead. That it was actually real—and present on Mars.
“First, it bothers me that I piloted the shuttle here with a cargo list that was false,” Dad continued, his dark blond hair waving angrily with each gesture. “Only someone high up in the Science Agency or the military on Earth would have the kind of pull to get away with that.” He frowned, and his square face looked fierce. “I don’t like being messed with by those clowns.”
Mom smiled at him. “Honey, don’t bottle up your emotions. It could give you ulcers.”
While I didn’t get my looks from her—she was tall and thin with dark hair and a beautiful face—I definitely got my sense of sarcasm from her.
Normally her teasing worked, and Dad lightened up. Tonight he ignored her comment. That’s when I knew he was really bugged—and that he, too, believed some sort of conspiracy was going on.
“Second,” Dad said, “I can’t believe they shipped it here secretly just for the comet.”
Rawling, always a good listener, leaned forward.
“For starters,” Dad explained, “you know it takes eight months to get from Earth to here.”
Yet the shuttles only arrived once every three years. The reason was that pilots had to wait until the planetary orbits were close together. Planned right, the trip was only 50 million miles. But if a ship left Mars just as Earth was headed to the opposite side of its orbit, the trip would take double the time. Much of the three-year trip meant waiting either on Earth or on Mars. Dad would be leaving again soon, and I wouldn’t see him for another three years. It was something I didn’t want to think about.
“What I want to know, then,” Dad insisted, “is how the military people on Earth knew about the comet ahead of time. If I understand your explanations, Rawling, comets in the far reaches of the solar system are next to invisible until they get close to Saturn. At best, we have only two months’ notice of its arrival beyond Mars. Yet the Hammerhead was sent on a shuttle nearly eight months ago. Did someone on Earth know 10 months ago that the comet would be a threat? If so, why wait this long to warn us? And why ship the Hammerhead secretly?”
“Maybe,” Mom said, “the Science Agency authorities didn’t want people on Earth to panic. From all the reports, things are politically unstable. Maybe news of a killer comet would upset the balance.”
Mom and Dad both looked at Rawling.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer those kinds of questions,” he said. “Believe me, I’m as frustrated as you are. I’m director of this dome. I should know about everything. But I wasn’t informed about the comet—or the Hammerhead—until last week when Tyce began his training on the computer program. Let me point out that it must have taken at least a couple of years on Earth for the scientists to develop the flight-simulation computer program and even more time to build the Hammerhead. My gut feeling is that once they knew Tyce’s operation let him handle virtual reality directly through his nervous system, they began work on the Hammerhead. And that was when Tyce was only six or seven years old!”
Dad stood. He crossed his arms as he stared down at Rawling. “When they started this program is the least of my concerns. What I’m really worried about is how little training he’ll get with the Hammerhead before he heads out into space in a cigar tube!”
Rawling stood too. He didn’t back down from Dad’s glare. “I care about Tyce as much as you do.”
Mom got up quickly and pushed them apart. “Do you two have any idea what’s happening here? You’re both angry, and you’re both looking to fight back against what’s making you mad. Except you can’t, because the people behind this aren’t here. You two are friends. Don’t let this destroy that. Especially when now is the time all of us have to work together.”
Dad kept glaring at Rawling. “I’m not going to kiss and make up with someone that ugly.”
Rawling glared back. “Think I’d let anyone with breath as bad as yours even get close?”
Then they both grinned.
Mom sighed. “Men.” She sat beside me and rested her hand on my arm. I patted her hand.
“I’m learning fast, Dad,” I said. “By the time the comet arrives in two months I don’t think I’ll have any problems with maneuvering the Hammerhead.”
Now it was Rawling’s turn to sigh. “This is the part I really hate to bring to all of you.”
“Yes?” Mom’s hand tightened on the muscles of my forearm.
“I just received another communication from Earth. They say that the Hammerhead’s weapon system is going to need testing. If we don’t do it now, we won’t know whether it’ll be effective when the comet is near.”
“So when is Tyce going up?” Dad demanded.
“Tomorrow,” Rawling said. “A small asteroid is making a loop that will come within five million miles of Mars.”
“Five million miles!” Mom exclaimed. “This isn’t like sending someone to the store for milk and bread.”
“No,” Rawling answered. “It isn’t. I wish I could see some way around it. But that asteroid is the only one that will be close enough in the next two months to test the Hammerhead.”
He eyeballed Dad. “I’m hoping you can take Tyce into orbit sometime in the afternoon. He’ll have to make his first real run in the Hammerhead then.”
CHAPTER 13
Normally I was asleep by 11:00. Normally I’d read from an e-book until I fell asleep.
Normally, though, I wouldn’t wake up the next day to face the prospect of buckling myself into a thin tube of metal and traveling a couple of million miles. Alone. In an experimental space vehicle.
And normally I wouldn’t be filled with sadness and anger. But I couldn’t help but go over it again and again. It seemed like my best friend had b
etrayed me. Who else but Ashley knew that I was going to go into the flight-simulation program and blow up the moon as a way to defeat the other pilot? Who else would have pulled away as I approached the moon?
But if it was Ashley, that led to a bunch of other questions. How had she become part of the flight simulation? Why keep it secret?
So I didn’t sleep.
At two thirty in the morning, after staring at the ceiling of the minidome all night, I lifted myself out of bed and into my wheelchair.
I was restless. Too restless to go to my computer and make journal entries. I silently rolled out of my room, out of our minidome, and into the hush of the big dome. The only sound was the gentle, distant whoosh of the air circulation pumps. It was dim, with most of the lights turned down. All the other minidomes were in shadow.
I had to talk to Ashley, but I wondered if I’d have the courage to knock on her minidome when I got there. Especially at three in the morning.
I rolled forward farther in the silence and dimness.
Halfway to the other minidome, I heard a strange whirring noise. It was barely noticeable above the air circulation pumps.
Maneuvering my wheelchair backward, I hid beside another minidome. I froze and waited.
The whirring noise grew louder.
Seconds later, I discovered what it was.
A robot. The high-tech one I’d seen the day I was outside the dome.
I followed.
I guessed that the newer model robot had video lenses to give it four-directional visuals. And that it could also sense my body heat. So I let it move down the path, well out of sight, before I rolled after it, keeping it in range by listening for the whirring of its motor.
I didn’t have to follow far. Partly because the entire dome is a circle only 400 yards in diameter. And partly because the robot stopped almost immediately once it passed all the minidomes and reached the storage areas.
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