I thought of my toes. How they had wiggled. And I wished this were the time to tell Dad. But his face was set in a frown. I’d save it for later.
“Dad,” I said, “we got here as quickly as we could.”
He nodded but seemed distracted. He pointed at his computer screen. “I’ve got something you need to see.”
Dad didn’t move from in front of the screen to give us a better look. He didn’t have to. Not in zero gravity. I hung upside down, above the screen. Ashley stretched horizontally behind him, looking over his shoulder.
Each of the spaceships in the fleet sent positioning signals to all the others. On the computer screen, each was a tiny white blip. If I had taken out a pen and connected the outer blips of the formation, I would have drawn a perfect diamond almost filling the screen. Since Dad was the lead pilot, our ship was at the front, with the others in formation behind. Ten ships, moving majestically and silently in space, thousands of miles apart. Some, like this one, held passengers. The others transported supplies and disassembled carbon-dioxide generators.
“The pattern seems normal to me,” I told Dad. I’d been worried there was trouble with one of the spaceships. Even though the former Manchurian military superpower had lost a series of battles during my Earth years, the World United Federation feared that their Terrataker rebels might try to stop our fleet as a last chance to win their war against the rest of the world.
“It is normal. But watch this.” Dad repeatedly punched a button on the console. The computer screen shifted and zoomed out. Again and again. Where once the diamond formation had filled the whole screen, it was reduced to half the screen. Then a quarter. It kept getting smaller and smaller until the blips of all 10 ships merged into one large blip.
Dad shrunk the screen more, and that large blip became almost invisible. Since it was plotted on a computer map of the solar system, the background was studded with the lights of brighter stars.
“Now it’s like seeing our space fleet from millions of miles away, right?” I asked.
“Essentially yes, although you need to keep in mind it’s a computer simulation of roughly 20 million miles of space. If the scale was truly accurate, you wouldn’t even see the blip that represents our fleet.” As Dad spoke, he tried to look straight up into my face. He grimaced as his neck twisted. “Let me get you down here on Ashley’s level.”
He was belted into the chair, so it took him very little effort to pull me beside him and spin my legs back so I was horizontal beside Ashley. My face was on one side of his shoulder. Hers on the other.
He glanced back and forth between Ashley and me. “Keep in mind that our formation is on the right-hand side of the screen, almost at Mars. Now look at the left side of the screen.”
“If the scale is 20 million miles,” Ashley said, “wouldn’t that be about halfway back to Earth?”
“Pretty close,” Dad said. He almost touched the screen as he pointed to a star.
Except it wasn’t a single star.
“Watch closely again,” he said as he hit the console button a few more times. The screen began to zoom in, each time making the white blip bigger. Seconds later the blip began to transform into an entire formation of blips.
“Looks like another fleet of spaceships,” I joked. “Weird that from this angle the stars would seem to fit together that way.”
“Tyce,” Dad said quietly, “it is another space fleet.”
“What?”
“I’ve received notice from the World United Federation. Our biggest fear has come true. It’s a fleet sent by the Manchurians.”
I shuddered. “Are you sure?”
“Take a look at the style of the ships,” Dad replied. He clicked and clicked to zoom in closer. “See those markings?”
Ashley and I both looked closer, almost bumping our heads together.
“I believe,” Dad said, “they intend to invade Mars.”
CHAPTER 5
That night, as usual in zero gravity, I hooked my belt to my sleeping bunk so I wouldn’t push off accidentally during the night and float into one of the opposite walls of my room.
I closed my eyes. But I doubted I would fall asleep. Too many thoughts bounced through my head.
If the next headache arrived on schedule, it wouldn’t be for another two hours. I was glad for the chance to think without pain. I tried to direct my thoughts toward the Manchurian invasion.
Writing always helped me think, so I began to keyboard a journal entry.
The key now for the Manchurians is to somehow take control of Mars. If they have it, they have leverage against all the other countries in the world. And control now is more important than ever, because it looks like the carbon-dioxide generators the space fleet carries will make it possible for Mars to become a colony in 10 years, instead of the 100 years that had first been projected.
I stopped keyboarding and stared blankly at my computer screen. The Manchurian space fleet should have worried me as I lay floating in the darkness, trying to fall asleep. The Terratakers had been doing everything possible to take over the Mars Project. If the Manchurians were on their way, I had no doubt that it meant Dr. Jordan and Luke Daab were with them.
However, my thoughts kept moving away to something else. I was too selfish. All I could think about was my toes. How they had wiggled at my command.
It’s so easy to take your body for granted. I was just as guilty of this as anyone. In my wheelchair growing up, I was still able to move my arms and hands and head. I never gave much thought to how incredible that was. Your brain sends a command to your hands, and they move. Sometimes I forgot about the miracle of that because I got mad that my legs wouldn’t respond. Those were the times that God seemed far away—or rather, the times that I didn’t want to talk to him. I was mad at him too, so I ignored him. Pretended he wasn’t there at all. Then a bunch of crises in my life and under the dome had forced me to think about him and discover who he really was. That there was more to life than what we saw on the surface. So I had come to peace, and it was easier to accept how he’d made me unique—even if it meant I was in a wheelchair for life.
And now, for the first time I could remember, my toes had moved!
After my surgery, the doctors had refused to make promises. They had said only time would tell if the surgery would work. But if my toes had moved after all these months in a body cast in space …
Lying in the darkness, I began to swell with hope. Maybe when the cast came off, I would be able to walk. To run! What would it feel like? I wondered.
Just as I began to daydream about running through the dome and catching a football thrown to me by Ashley, our ship exploded.
At least that’s what it felt like to me.
It took a second to realize the explosion had happened in my head. The headache had arrived early. Even though my eyes were closed in agony, I saw flashing lights and stars, the way it is when you hit your head against something.
And just when I couldn’t stand the pain any longer, the flashing lights shut down into total blackness.
CHAPTER 6
I met Dad at breakfast.
Well, it wasn’t actually breakfast. Just some liquids in plastic bags called nutrient-tubes. I drank carefully for two reasons. First, although I had woken up normally when the alarm on my watch sounded, my head still throbbed a little. And second, you don’t want to spill anything in zero gravity.
Once Ashley had told me a joke while I was sucking orange juice. I’d laughed and some of the orange juice had gone down the wrong throat tube. Because of my coughing fit, I’d spewed orange juice in all directions.
On Earth that would only mean a sticky mess on the floor, easy to clean up with a couple of wipes.
In zero gravity? Hundreds of tiny orange-juice pellets had immediately spread through the eating room. It had taken 10 minutes to chase them all down, slurping each one back into my mouth as Ashley groaned in disgust.
This morning I was alone in the eating room unt
il Dad pushed through the hatch, holding a folded piece of paper. “Hey,” he said, “Ashley tells me you have some news. Hope it’s good. I could use some right about now.”
I gave Dad the best smile I could. “My toes wiggled last night. I didn’t say anything because the Manchurian fleet …”
“Sidetracked us,” Dad finished for me, worry spreading across his face. Then his eyes grew wide, as if he’d just realized what I’d said. “Really?” he said slowly. “Your toes actually wiggled? Let’s see.”
I looked down and focused. They moved again. And even more than last time.
“I can hardly wait to tell your mother!” Dad exclaimed, grinning broadly.
“Me too,” I said.
Then Dad’s grin faded. “You all right? I thought you’d be a little more excited.”
“Just worried about the other ships,” I said, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. I didn’t want to concern him further by telling him about my headaches.
Dad nodded and held up the piece of paper. “The other fleet. With all that’s happened since you left Mars, I don’t blame you for thinking the worst.”
It was my turn to nod. If he thought I was worried about the Manchurians, I was going to leave it that way. He had enough to think about as head pilot of the fleet with people like Jordan and Daab on our tail. I’d keep my headaches to myself. Especially since I doubted there was anything he—or anyone else on board the spaceship—could do about them.
“This isn’t going to make you any happier either,” Dad said. He handed me the paper. “A printout from Rawling.”
What kind of bad news would Rawling send? I wondered.
I unfolded the paper. It was an e-mail.
From: “Rawling McTigre”
To: “Chase Sanders”
Sent: 04.24.2043, 2:39 P.M.
Subject: Manchurian fleet
Chase (and Tyce),
Last night I received from Earth the same computer information that they indicated was sent to you. I presume you downloaded it immediately and saw that the Manchurian fleet is only a couple of months behind.
My director’s report contains some additional information—that military officials on Earth just learned about the fleet themselves. Evidently the Manchurians assembled their own fleet on the dark side of the Moon and launched it in secrecy.
So that explains it, I thought. Why no one—not even the higher-ups on Earth—seemed to know about the fleet until now.
Rawling’s e-mail went on:
However, don’t worry. Because you’ll be arriving first, we should have ample time to set up the surface-to-space missile system you are bringing with you.
See you in two days. Stay in touch—and God bless your journey!
Rawling
P.S. In the meantime, Kristy sends you and Tyce and Ashley all her love. She can’t wait to see you!
Kristy. My mom. I was glad to know Mom was thinking about me, just like I was thinking about her. When I didn’t have to worry about killer headaches and a killer Manchurian fleet, of course.
“I don’t get it,” I said, reading the e-mail twice. “It was well publicized that our fleet was carrying atomic missiles— in fact, enough to repel more than 10 Manchurian fleets—to protect Mars against future invasions. The whole point was to make sure the Manchurians didn’t even try. So what do they think they can accomplish?”
“Rawling will give us all the information we’re cleared to receive when we get to Mars,” Dad said. He squeezed my shoulder lightly. “And just so you’ll relax, Rawling has a good point. We do have a lot of time to set up our defenses before the other ships arrive.”
“Maybe they have long-range weapons on their spaceships,” I put in. I’d learned from experience that you never knew what the rebels were up to. “Maybe they’ll nuke the dome before our weapons can nuke them.”
“Maybe,” Dad said quietly.
I studied his face. “You don’t look worried.”
“Ever since the Mars Dome was established 18 years ago, it hasn’t needed weapons to protect itself from outerspace invasion. So tell me why Mars is suddenly considered valuable enough to be attacked.”
“The carbon-dioxide generators,” I said. It was an easy answer. That was the whole purpose of the fleet. Carbon dioxide meant that plants could grow. Growing plants produced oxygen. Eventually Mars would have enough atmosphere to be a new colony. And that means the colonization of Mars can take place that much faster.
“Exactly. If the Manchurians fire atomic weapons on Mars, it will destroy the very thing they want. So they won’t. The only way Mars is worth anything to them is if they can land and take over the dome intact. But there’s no way they can land once our surface-to-space missile system is in place. And we’ve got plenty of time to get it ready.” Dad patted my leg. “No worries, then, right?”
I hardly heard him.
“Tyce? Tyce?”
I was staring at my left leg. The one he had just patted.
“Tyce?” he asked one more time.
I looked up at my dad, hardly daring to believe. “It’s the strangest thing. I think I felt that.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“The bottom of my leg. Where you touched me.”
“Here?” Dad grabbed my calf and squeezed.
It felt like electricity running through my body—good, tingling electricity. “Yes! There!” I’d never felt any sensation in my legs before!
Dad high-fived me. Except we slapped palms so hard that it drove us apart in the zero gravity. Seconds later, Dad banged into one wall. I banged into another.
And all we did was grin at each other.
If only the chance to walk was all I had to worry about in the next few months… .
CHAPTER 7
That night, on the final hours before our approach to Mars, I was alone in the navigation cone, watching the planet loom closer and closer. I’d be back on the red planet within 24 hours.
Dad and everyone else on the spaceship were asleep. That meant the ship was on autopilot, so I had the navigation cone to myself.
I should have been asleep too, but another killer headache had struck. Not bad enough to knock me out this time, which would have been a mercy. Instead it had throbbed for about a half hour, leaving me dizzy and unable to sleep.
Usually in my quiet hours I wrote in my journal on my comp-board. So I had taken it to the navigation cone with me.
I had written a little.
I had dimmed all the lights and stared out into space. Through the glass it felt like I could reach out and touch Mars. And what a glorious sight! I was finally almost home— after a long three years.
Rawling had reported a huge dust storm, and it was just settling. As light from the sun behind the spaceship hit the planet at the right angle, I watched the horizon of Mars spin into sight.
It brought me Mount Olympus, its huge extinct crater sticking out of the dust storm. The mountain itself was bigger than Colorado and reached 15 miles into the sky.
I kept watching, without feeling sleepy at all.
The beauty made me sad, in a way. Because I wondered if there was a tumor or something in my brain to cause these headaches. Was I going to die? Would this be the last time I’d see something as incredible as Mars with the sun warming it?
To take my mind off my thoughts, I turned to my compboard. But instead of writing, I found myself reading the first entry I had ever put in my journal. It brought back a lot of memories, reminding me of how I’d first learned of my robot-control abilities.
First, today’s date: AD 06.20.2039, Earth calendar. It’s been a little more than 14 years since the dome was established in 2025. When I think about it, that means some of the scientists and techies in the dome were my age around the year 2000, even though the last millennium seems like ancient history. Of course, kids back then didn’t have to deal with water shortage wars and … an exploding population t
hat meant we had to find a way to colonize Mars.
Things have become so desperate on Earth that already 500 billion dollars have been spent on this project, which seems like a lot until you do the math and realize that’s only about 10 dollars for every person on the planet.
Kristy Sanders, my mom, used to be Kristy Wallace until she married my father, Chase Sanders. They teamed up with nearly 200 men and women specialists from all countries across the world when the first ships left Earth. I was just a baby, so I can’t say I remember, but from what I’ve been told, those first few years of assembling the dome were heroic. Now we live in comfort. I’ve got a computer that lets me download e-entertainment from Earth by satellite, and the gardens that were planted when I was a kid make parts of the dome seem like a tropical garden. It isn’t a bad place to live.
But now it could become a bad place to die… .
Let me say this to anyone on Earth who might read this. If, like me, you have legs that don’t work, Mars, with its lower gravity pull, is probably a better place to be than Earth.
That’s only a guess, of course, because I haven’t had the chance to compare Mars’ gravity to Earth’s gravity. In fact, I’m the only person in the entire history of mankind who has never been on Earth.
I’m not kidding.
You see, I’m the first person born on Mars. Everyone else here came from Earth nearly eight Martian years ago—15 Earth years to you—as part of the first expedition to set up a colony. The trip took eight months, and during this voyage my mother and father fell in love.
I smiled. I’d forgotten about that. Back when Mom and Dad first came to Mars, the trip from Mars to Earth had taken eight months. And in just 18 years, scientists had been able to take two months off that time. We were really speeding through space now!
I went back to my first journal entry.
Mom is a leading plant biologist. Dad is a space pilot. They were the first couple to be married on Mars. And the last, for now. They loved each other so much that they married by exchanging their vows over radio phone with a preacher on Earth. When I was born half a Mars year later—which now makes me 14 Earth years old—it made things so complicated on the colony that it was decided there would be no more marriages and babies until the colony was better established.
Final Battle Page 12
