Ambush (10 page)
“I know this is hard to believe, but it
is
Tyce,” I said. I needed to come up with something he knew only I could know. “The last time we spoke, I was trying to feed you live video from the cave-in.”
There was a pause, and then, “Tyce?”
“You've got to trust me. The neuron guns won't fire anymore. Wake everyone up. It's 200 of you against 6 of them. They don't have a chance. Then come and get me from Dr. Jordan's office.”
Dad groaned. “How can I believe a voice in the dark?”
“It's Project 3. A miniaturized robot called an ant-bot. Don't move. I'll pinch your neck to show you this is real.”
I did.
He laughed in the darkness. “Tyce!”
“It's 200 against 6,” I said one more time. “All you need to do is walk up there and ask one of the guards to shoot you. When everybody sees that his gun doesn't work, the fight will be over.”
And that was it.
Except for the cave-in.
During the first crisis that hit the dome, Mom asked me to keep a journal so Earth people would know what it was like to live on Mars. Even though we survived the oxygen crisis, Mom insisted I keep writing about what happens on Mars. She has a good pointâno one else in the solar system can say they grew up on this planet. At least not yet. And she says that my journals will at least let me look back when I'm an old man and remember everything a lot easier.
Even though Mom's right, there have been times I complained to her about writing my journal entries. I'd much rather be up at the telescope or working with the robot bodies.
I've decided, though, that I'll never complain again.
Here I am, parked in front of my computer, when only 24 hours earlier I was a prisoner in a storage room, afraid of what might happen to me and my parents and the other scientists under the dome, and especially worried about the cave-in.
It is great to be safe. With my biggest problem being what words to put on a blank computer screen. I could be there again, in front of the piled-up rocks of the cave-in, frantically scared that once we dug through, we would find Rawling and the other three dead.
I closed my eyes and thought about what it was like to be there. When I was ready, I began to type.
09.24.2039
If the rescue team consisted of techies in space suits, the oxygen and water of the men trapped by all that rock would have run out long before those techies could have reached them.
Instead, the men were rescued by robots. It became the Mars Project's best argument for the use of robot bodies controlled by humans like me or Ashley.
We began the rescue attempt early in the morning after the scientists and techies had locked up Steven, Jordan, and the guards. The temperature beneath the jet-black Martian sky had dropped to minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind had picked up, making it even colder.
But Ashley and I were back in the dome, miles away, warm and comfortable and relaxed. Relaxed, except for our minds. Connected by the remotes to our robot bodies, we were concentrating as hard as if we were in a marathon video game. What was better, we were working at it together.
At our direction, all those miles away from the dome, the robot bodies picked up rocks and threw them backward far faster than any human could work. We were helped by two things. First, the robots could lift rocks six times heavier than any Olympian weight lifter. Second, because of the reduced gravity on Mars, even the heaviest of rocks were within the load capabilities of the robots. And unlike human bodies, the robots didn't get tired. A platform buggy stood nearby, with techies ready to replace the robot batteries.
The robots worked out there, side by side, for 15 hours straight, taking breaks only when Ashley and I got too tired to concentrate.
Then, in the 16th hour, we broke through.
Rawling and the other three were in a deep pocket of space, close to their last breaths of oxygen.
Dad told us that while Ashley and I were handling the robots, the dramatic rescue attempt was captured live on video and transmitted to Earth media sources. All across the Earth, people watched as Rawling got to his feet and hugged my robot.
Dad says that one image was enough to earn renewed support for the Mars Project and for the budget it would take to develop the robot bodies even more.
Dr. Jordan and Blaine Steven never did get their chance for worldwide attention, but the robots did.
And I have to admit, I liked that!
“It was a setup from the beginning,” Rawling said, scratching his short, dark hair that was streaked with gray. “The bombs were in one of the packs. If we hadn't set them against the side of the cave before going in deeper, we would have died instantly.”
Rawling and I sat at the telescope on the upper floor of the dome. It was good to see him healthy after wondering if I'd ever see him alive again.
“Dr. Jordan wanted you out of the dome before he began his takeover.”
“Exactly,” Rawling said. “I should have been suspicious when he insisted that the search needed a medical person. But his position gave him even more authority than the dome director.”
I stared upward through the dome at the incredibly black sky of a Martian night. “You won't have to worry about him anymore, huh?”
“Wrong, Tyce.”
He said it so sharply that I snapped my head back.
“Think about it. Jordan nearly engineered civil war back on Earth. It's not something he could do without help. And then there are the others you've told me about. Tomorrow we're going to learn everything we can from Ashley. I think there's a lot more to worry about.”
Rawling was right. I had plenty of questions too. Because of the cave-in rescue operationâwith both Ashley and me controlling the big robots to help move rockâthings had been too frantic for me to ask her about anything. Including how she'd survived the Hammerhead space torpedo crash.
Tomorrow. Not only would we talk to Ashley, but tomorrow marked the last day I'd see my dad for three years. Tomorrow night the shuttle headed back to Earth. With Blaine Steven and Dr. Jordan along as prisoners.
“Tyce?” Rawling broke into my thoughts. “Look.”
He pointed. I didn't need the telescope to know what it was.
Earth.
“Must be strange,” I said. “Seeing it hang there night after night, with all your memories of growing up there.”
Rawling laughed. “No more strange than your seeing it hang there night after night, being the only human in history never to have spent any time there.”
“Yeah,” I said softly, “it is strange.”
“Probably be even more strange seeing it for the first time.”
“Yeah,” I said, “it would be.”
“Not
would
, Tyce.
Will
.”
I wasn't sure I understood. “It
will
be strange to see it for the first time?”
Rawling patted my shoulder. “Tomorrow night. You and Ashley will be on the ship with your dad.”
“What!”
“For the Mars Project to survive, we need a lot of questions answered. And Mars isn't the place to find those answers. You will go, won't you? I've already talked with your parents about it, and even your mom agrees that she wants you to go.”
I hardly heard him. I was staring at that ball of white and blue, 50 million miles away.
Earth.
Asteroid.
I used to have this picture in my mind that an asteroid collision meant a rock the size of a mountain ramming a planet or moon at full speed. That the impact would have the power of 10 nuclear bombs. That there would be a massive crater and earthquakes and maybe even parts of the planet or moon splitting off to spin back into space.
Not with this asteroid.
At the most, it had been half the size of a pea. Barely more than space dust. If it had been headed toward Earth, the friction of its high-speed entrance into the atmosphere would have burned it in a brief flare of glory. Anyone seeing it from the groundâand they would have, because even a pea-size asteroid throws a lot of light when it burnsâmight have wished upon a star.
It had not hit Earth.
It had hit our spaceship, over three-quarters into its 50-million-mile journey from Mars to Earth. It wasn't like running into an iceberg. We hadn't felt the impact inside the ship. But instantly alarm bells had started to clang, waking all nine of us inside and throwing us into emergency mode.
The tiny piece of intergalactic rock had punctured the outer hull, and now valuable oxygen bled into the vacuum of space. Worse, like a tiny stream of water wearing through soggy paper, the hole was growing far too quickly.
It was too dangerous to suit someone up and send him out attached by a safety cable. Which meant I was the one to step into outer space.
Well, not me. But my robot body, because it didn't need the protective clumsiness of a space suit.
I was actually still inside the ship, my brain hooked up by computer to the robot controls. Everything that the robot body sensed, however, reached me as if it were my own body out there.
The robot body was connected to the ship by a safety cable, and it floated and bobbed as I tried to find the source of the leak at the back part of the hull. The view beyond the ship was incredible. We were headed directly toward the sun, and even at some 120 million miles away, it still seemed like the center of the universe.
It did not look yellow. Human eyes need an atmosphere to filter colors, and out here in space, there was no atmosphere. Instead, it was a circle of incredible brightness.
Earth was close enough now that I could see it clearly too. Not in front of the sun. That would have been like looking into a floodlight and trying to see a marble glued to the bulb. No, Earth was off to the side of the sun, and it reflected light as purely as the moon on a dark night.
As a backdrop in all directions, millions and millions of pinpricks showed the light of stars and galaxies. It boggled my mind to think that some of those tiny dots were actually clusters of thousands of stars.
“Tyce? Find anything?”
This was my dad's voice coming through the radio. Not that I needed reminding of the urgency of my mission. If the hole in the hull exploded, all of us inside were dead.
“Nothing yet,” I said. “Hang on.”
Sunlight caught the rounded hull at an angle that showed me a small dent in the perfect titanium skin.
“Think I found it,” I said. “Just in front of one of the hydrogen tanks.”
I heard Dad gasp. “You mean it hits us a couple feet farther back and ⦔
Pressure inside the hydrogen tanks was easily 1,000 times higher than pressure inside the spaceship. If the asteroid pea had hit the tank, we would have blown apart into space dust.
“I will be careful,” I said. “Promise.”
I'd been handling a robot for years, so I wasn't worried about how to move the robot arms and hands and fingers. What I was worried about was the welding torch in the robot's right hand.
My job was to seal on a thin square of titanium about the size of a human's palm, like slapping a bandage over a cut. Except it wasn't that simple.
In the fingers of my robot's left hand was a thin rod of titanium alloy. Because it wasn't pure titanium, it melted at a slightly lower temperature than titanium. I needed to touch the rod and the flame of the welding torch together at the edge of the titanium patch, then melt the tip of the rod so that liquid titanium alloy dribbled over the edge of the patch. As the titanium alloy cooled and solidified again, it would form a seal. Almost like using a glue gun. Once I'd sealed off all sides of the square patch, my job would be finished. Trouble was, the welding torch flame generated heat at over 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit. And I hadn't used a welding torch much.
In fact, this was only my second time.
My first had been on Mars, under the dome, in practice sessions with Rawling. That was over 40 million miles away.
I didn't give myself any more time to worry. This hole had to be sealed. Immediately.
I let myself drift closer to the hull. The robot wheels made a dull clank as they hit the hull. It wasn't a sound that reached the audio components of the robot's body, however. Sound can't travel through a vacuum. Instead, I heard it through the slight vibrations that traveled up the robot body.
I was ready. The titanium patch had a temporary glue to keep it in place. I pushed the patch down, and the glue held. Under the lights of millions of stars, I began to weld.
What I couldn't adjust to was the intensity of the flame's light. “Dad,” I said into the radio, “you need to roll the ship a little so I am not in the shadows.”
The sun was on the other side. Its light would make it easier for me to see what I needed to do.
Seconds later, the ship rolled. Just slightly. In space, it takes too much fuel to over-correct any sudden movements.