Just be ready, Jeff told himself. Don’t give Nanny any excuse to leave you behind.
He packed his backpack. He ate a concentrated breakfast ration. He checked the bandage and put on his boots. He brushed his teeth.
Five minutes.
He wanted to check his e-mail. As soon as he turned on the computer, a warning notice flashed on the screen: METEOR RISK HIGH NEXT FOUR HOURS. ALL PERSONNEL TAKE PRECAUTIONS.
That meant lots of jiggles on the space station, maybe even a puncture. Mom and Dad would be nervous wrecks today. Jeff reached into a cubby next to the desk and took out the emergency air mask. He set it next to the keyboard. For once Jeff was glad he’d be with Nanny. He hadn’t believed the robot before when it told him it could fix any meteor damage. Now he knew better—the safest place to be in a meteor storm was with a prowler.
He checked his e-mail. SORRY, NO MAIL.
What had happened to his pen pal? The last message said he was sick and not to worry. But Jeff did worry. It made him sad to think he might lose his new friend just like that. What fun if they were both hunting the rat—so much more fun than hunting with Nanny! Fat chance his pen pal could ever visit the space station, but it was fun to imagine. Would they meet when he got back to Earth? That might be—
The door buzzed. Jeff spun the chair around and hurled himself out of it. Then he stopped. Was Nanny waiting there with a dead rat dangling from a gripper?
The door opened and there was Nanny. Just Nanny. “Follow me. You are wasting time.”
Nanny turned and moved down the corridor. Jeff grabbed his backpack and gun, and followed. When he caught up, Nanny said, “Progress report: Analysis indicates the rat’s nest is in the Mid-Ring workshop. We will find it now. The hunt will end.”
“What’s the Mid-Ring workshop?”
“The parts for the last five rings were made there. The machines are worn out. The workshop has not been used for twenty years, four months, three days. The records say there is no air in it.” Nanny stopped abruptly. Jeff bumped into it. The green eye swiveled to face him. “Sloppy people! The records are wrong! There is air. How can Nanny search properly if the records are wrong?”
Jeff shrugged.
Nanny’s eye glowed brighter.
“Sloppy boy,” Nanny said. “Where is your emergency mask?”
Jeff touched his belt clip. “Shoot! Left it on the desk. I’d better go get it.”
“Delay delay—unacceptable. Top priority: Kill the rat,” Nanny droned, and started to move away from Jeff. Then Nanny hesitated, stopped. “Nanny must protect the boy from harm—orders.”
Nanny was his protector? He’d thought they’d made the robot just to keep him out of their way.
Nanny spun around. “Go back. Quick.”
Jeff hurried. He didn’t want Nanny to march him back. What a surprise to see Nanny confused! A perfect example of fuzzy logic. He was telling himself to remember it for Mr. DiSalvo’s artificial intelligence class, when he opened the door. The clickity-tap of keys immediately drew his attention to the computer. Something lavender stood on the keyboard.
“Hey!”
It startled, turning eyes as black as sunspots on him.
Jeff had never seen a rat before. He didn’t know they could be that color. He didn’t know rats had eyes like that, or such big, pink ears. He wasn’t even sure rats had ears. They were so delicate. The light from the monitor shone through them. They had dark little veins, just like a leaf.
“Alert! Alert! Privacy override!”
Jeff’s legs went out from under him. The world tilted, like a bad step while running.
Meteor!
But then he felt Nanny’s hard shell shoving against the side of his leg, collapsing his knee. He flailed for balance. His boots slid on Nanny’s smoothness. Door frame. Grab it. He missed and toppled down on Nanny. Motors whined shrilly. Flashes of laser fire lit the room. Zizz. Zizz. The wall above his bed exploded in a shower of hot sparks.
Nanny regained its wheels and rushed to the bed, grippers extending as it moved. It ripped the grating off the vent. Something fell onto the bed, bounced, rolled off.
The rat? But it couldn’t be, because Nanny paid no attention to it. Nanny seized the edge of the vent and hauled its body up so that its eye could see inside. Zizz-zizz. Zizz-zizz.
Nanny dropped onto the bed. Rattle-bump-ping: A sniffer popped out, jaws snapping madly. Nanny lifted it into the vent, then somersaulted to the floor.
“Get out of the way,” Nanny said.
“That was the rat! What was it doing here?” Jeff asked, scrambling to his feet.
“Get out of the way,” Nanny said.
“Where are you going?”
“It is ninety percent likely the animal will flee to its nest. I will be there.”
Jeff picked up his gun. “Me too!”
“No. You will stay here.”
“That’s not fair! I would have blasted it. It’s just … well, I thought rats were brown!”
“You are an ignorant boy. Move aside.”
“No!”
“Yes!” Nanny seemed to get bigger, like a porcupine raising its quills. Dozens of mechanical arms poked out of hidden holes in Nanny’s black armor and waved and clattered. Nanny lurched forward.
Jeff meant to hold his ground, but the instant before Nanny touched him, he flinched and let Nanny scoot past.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE CHASE
Rat was not running as fast as she wanted to. Rat was not running as fast as she needed to.
Faster! Faster!
But the metal air duct was not very grippy. Rat’s sharp nails and soft toes slapped and slipped. The sniffer motor whined behind her, louder every moment. The shrill noise hurt her sensitive ears.
Rat ran straight toward her goal. No point in dodging this way or that. Once a sniffer got on your trail, it never lost you. It followed you by sight and scent and heat and many other signs. The only way to escape was to break the trail completely. There was only one place Rat might do that: the central air shaft. She needed to leap all the way across it. She must do it before the sniffer saw her.
Such a huge leap!
Rat did not know if she could make it. She would need all her courage. But her heart hurt. Not just from working so hard to feed the burning muscles in her legs. No, it was the green eye pushing past the boy’s legs—a sight that seemed to be painted on the back of her eyes. The boy had startled her, but it was the eye so unexpectedly close to the floor that nearly cost Rat her life. Where were the soft pads? The round body? Surprise and confusion had made her hesitate, almost too long.
Hunted by such a terrible machine. And the boy helping it.
The breeze grew stronger. It cooled her and put more speed into her legs. A right-angle corner appeared. Rat did not break her pace. She crashed her body into the wall and kicked out with her back legs. She flew four feet before her paws again touched the metal. A dim square of light shone where this air shaft entered the central shaft. And dark beyond it, the square of the opposite air shaft. Her target. It looked no bigger than a postage stamp.
The breeze grew stronger still. It became an enemy, pushing against her. Would it slow her too much? Her feet slapped. The fan roared. The sniffer motor faded away in her final, desperate sprint.
Something’s wrong.
An uneasy feeling came from the part of her brain that knew patterns. Why is that branch shaft there? What is that hole ahead in the floor? Rat realized all her effort had been a waste. She was in the wrong shaft! Having to jump that hole first would break her stride. She could never regain enough speed to make the big leap. It must have happened when she zigzagged to escape the laser blasts. The blinding light, the shower of sparks, the smoke that felt like wood chips up her nose had confused her.
Rat locked her legs, skidded, fell. She tumbled in several bumpy, bouncy, head-over-heels rolls.
She stopped with her nose touching the edge of the hole. Her delicate whiskers brus
hed the creases of metal, the tiny bumps of rivets. Her brain instantly showed where the hole went, where it came out. This wasn’t a disaster after all. Seeing how the hole fit in the maze of air shafts, Rat thought of a plan. She hunched at the edge and drew in a big, confident breath: The prey was about to become the hunter.
Her plan to destroy the sniffer was as dangerous as trying to jump across the central air shaft. The sniffer must see her. The sniffer must get very close. Any error in timing, any stumble, would be Rat’s last mistake.
The sniffer’s motor suddenly went silent. Rat looked over her shoulder to see it paused at the corner; its eyestalks wobbled, searching. The moment it saw Rat, its jaws started chomping. Rat flattened her ears, but the terrible sound snapped in her like bones breaking. The sniffer moved. Rat jumped the hole and scurried to the very edge of the opening into the central shaft. She poked her head into the breeze.
Yes! There, just a body length out from the opening, was the small pipe that went back to the hole in the vent.
Rat faced the sniffer. As the pointed steel teeth drew nearer and nearer Rat told herself, It is mindless, and I am clever.
The sniffer slowed for an instant when it sensed the hole, then sproing, it was over on her side.
Rat dropped over the edge and vanished into the small pipe. Silent, without breathing. Slinking without sound. Swift as a snake, Rat flowed through the pipe that made a twisty U-turn back into the hole. Rat popped out right behind the sniffer, which was tilted up on two wheels at the brink, leaning its eyestalks into the central shaft. Rat’s toes grasped the riveted edge. Her rear paws bunched for an instant, then head tucked, shoulder forward, she lunged.
Smack!
Rat smashed into the sniffer. It flew into the central shaft. A desperate grab at the frame around the opening; a second suspended, then toenails split, broke, and Rat fell, too.
The sniffer tumbled out, bouncing and clattering like a tin can as it hit the pipes crisscrossing the shaft.
Rat fell behind it. The breeze grew stronger and stronger.
Leaves.
Rat did not know why she thought of them. But the precious, remembered images from her first look out the window came sharper. Leaves. Leaves tossed by the wind. They fell, but not straight, not fast.
Maybe …
Not much time …
But Rat had more time than the sniffer.
Whap! The fan blades shattered it into a hundred glittery nuts, bolts, and computer chips.
Against the instinct that had curled her into a ball, Rat threw her paws wide as if to embrace her fate. She made herself broad. She made herself flat.
Rat fluttered—flew!
Almost.
Her right forepaw brushed a thin pipe. Too quick to grab.
Another, bigger, ahead. But out of reach to her right.
Tilt!
Rat actually changed direction!
Tilt!
Whap!
Rat hit the pipe, curled her body tight, wrapped her tail. Pain flared from the blister, and she nearly let go.
Cling! Cling!
She spun around the pipe once, twice. Stopped.
Her shoulder hurt. Her stomach hurt. Her tail hurt.
Rat watched the fan blades spin. What now? What now?
CHAPTER TWELVE
DISCOVERY
Jeff crossed the threshold and stopped. The air stank of charred plastic and paint and the tingle of zapped molecules. He looked at the keyboard.
Lavender. Why did he know the rat’s fur was lavender-colored? It bothered him, that word. If only it had been a plain brown rat, then maybe he would have blasted it before Nanny interfered.
Jeff shied at the memory of the hard metal raking against his leg, the loss of balance, falling …
Falling.
Something fell when Nanny tore the grate off the vent above the bed. Jeff thought it was the rat, but that was a mistake. He snapped out of his memories to focus alertly on the room. There it was, just beside the bed: a toilet-paper tube. Jeff picked it up.
Heavy.
The weight surprised his fingers, and he almost dropped it. Cautiously he brought it up to his face. He looked in the end. His heart thumped. He looked in the other end.
“Oh, wow!” he said. “Those got me in so much trouble!”
What were the missing lenses doing stuck in a toilet-paper tube with some gum—his gum? No one else on the space station chewed gum. Who made the tube? Why did that person hide it in the vent—his vent? Did someone want to get him in more trouble? But that didn’t make sense. No one would ever look in the vent.
Jeff put the tube to his eye. He saw a tiny dot of hazy light. Backward. He turned it around. He noticed three little notches in the rim of the tube. Ah! To show which side to look in! Clever.
But who had been so clever?
Jeff stared at the tube in his palm. The notches reminded him of the teeth marks on the wire.…
Jeff brought the tube to his eye. It seemed as if he had jumped straight across the room and put his nose to the wall. He could see the seam in the wall panel and the tiny nicks in the rivets where the riveting tool had marked them. When he tried to look anywhere else, the image blurred. Jeff knew a few things about lenses and telescopes because his parents worked with them. Sometimes he paid attention when they talked. This homemade spyglass had a fixed focus. It was meant to look at one spot.
Jeff got up on the bed. This put his head almost even with the vent. He leaned against the wall. His nose wrinkled. The charred smell was strongest here. He put the tube to his eye again. The computer monitor filled the eyepiece. Perfectly clear, he saw his last e-mail to his pen pal, now in reply mode, and the beginning of a new message:
DO NOT KILL RATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT>*&%F)
The rat hadn’t just been standing on the keyboard, it had been typing. And when Jeff walked in, its little paw with the white cuff—yes, he remembered that now—the paw stood on the T key all the while it stared at Jeff.
Nanny was right. There never were any messages from Earth.
Jeff dropped the tube and leaped for the computer. He opened the in-box and swept the subject lines with his finger. There: no picture.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: no picture
I cannot send my picture. But I am very beautiful. I have a lavender coat with white cuffs. Here is how it looks.
The square of color removed all doubt: I’ve been hunting my pen pal!
Nanny is hunting my pen pal!
Quick! Quick!
Fingers fumbled on the keys. Slower.
QUERY: station maps, index, workshop.
Three dozen references flashed on the screen. Dumb!
QUERY: miding—delete—Mid-Ring Workshop.
A map appeared showing a huge area on Ring 5.
QUERY: main entrance.
The image automatically zoomed to focus on a giant door in section 3, level 2.
Go!
Stop!
Gun. Now go!
Run. Run!
Jeff did not care who saw him. No one could stop him. He would run straight through the captain if he got in the way. But the boots still slipped, and the gun thumped hard against his hip. The bandage began to unravel from the strain. Soon that blister would really begin to hurt.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EMERGENCY!
Rat sniffed. The air smelled untouched. Rat licked her forepaws. She rubbed them all over her nose to make it as clean as could be. Rat lay down and inched to the end of the narrow shaft. Carefully she poked her nose into the dim emptiness beyond. Her nostrils flared and quivered. Yes. Yes. The air was the same, stale and still. Safe.
Ever so slowly Rat oozed out of the shaft into the tunnel. Her nest was only a dozen body lengths farther along. The tunnel had room enough for Rat to swish her tail without touching the sides. But it was too small for humans, too small even for Nanny.
But not for sniffers or gobb
lers or fix-its, Rat reminded herself. Rat paused to listen, to sniff, to stretch her whiskers into the dimness. Rat had chosen well. Not even those little robots had found this place.
The tunnel was inside the walls of a forgotten part of the space station. Rat never went into that huge room, not once she found the tunnel. It was too open, with too few places to hide. The giant gray machines frightened Rat, though they were covered in thick dust. What were they for? Could they suddenly start up? Better to stay away from them.
There was thick dust in the tunnel, too. Nice dust. It sifted between Rat’s toes as she crept closer and closer to her nest. She savored the feel of it so soft under her toes. They hurt from all the running on hard metal. She never found dust anywhere else in the space station. It made her feel the tunnel was another world—a world safe for a rat.
The air took on a spicy tang. A few more steps and Rat’s whiskers touched the curlicue edges of torn plastic. She licked the liverwurst. Mmmm—still good! But Rat could not eat any, not yet. Her stomach felt like a hard marble, with no space inside. She moved around, touching everything. Her supplies were exactly where she had left them. She sniffed her nest. Rat, the smells told her. Only Rat.
She hugged the warm pipe. The heat seeped into her tired, hurting body.
Pffss-sit!
Rat flinched, and all the achy places started hurting again.
Stupid noise!
These sudden, mysterious sounds used to be a game, but now she did not need a game. She needed silence. Something might come sneaking during the noise. How could she get rid of it?
The noise came from behind a big metal box on the wall opposite her nest. Rat investigated it. Under a tiny blue light, there was a switch turned to ON. There was an OFF, too. So maybe she could get rid of it. But what would that do? Would something bad happen? Would a fix-it come?
There was a label. In the dim light, Rat had to press her nose against the box to read the letters—one by one. Then she put them together in her head: STABILIZER ROCKET #724 CONTROL BOX.
Space Station Rat Page 5
