Death Trap (4 page)
Twenty tanks were stolen. There should be no possible way for 20 tanks to be hidden. Not when the minidomes are so small a person couldn't even hide one tank.
I wondered too about the three people who stole the tanks. As soon as they start to use the noisy tanks, they'll be found. Unless they're going to wait until the rest of us are no longer breathing.
I wondered how they'd explain this when the spaceship finally arrived. My father and the other pilots would walk in, and the people who stole the tanks would be the only ones healthy and living.
The latest news flash: Director Steven now says that because of the stolen tanks, even if we don't use any electricity in the next three days and even if all of us sleep all the time, we'll still run short of oxygen one day before the ship arrives.
I began to type again.
This morning Rawling told me that some other people had a secret meeting. He was invited because he's a doctor. He was also invited because if Rawling agrees to something, most other people in the dome will agree. They trust him.
Well, the meeting is no longer a secret.
Rawling got very angry with what they suggested. He not only refused to join them, but he brought their idea immediately to the attention of Director Steven and wants them arrested.
You see, the people in this meeting did some math. They say that even after the oxygen tanks were stolen, there is enough oxygen under the dome for 180 people to survive until the ship arrives.
This means the dome needs 20 fewer people in it than it has now.
The people in this meeting want to draw names to see which 20 people should die.
“Tyce, as you can imagine, I have very little time for anything else but the oxygen problem,” Director Steven said. “As it is, I can only fit five minutes into my schedule for you. I hope this meeting is as important as you insisted.”
Short and wide, Director Steven has thick, wavy, gray hair. He likes to run his hands through it as he talks. I think he does that because he likes to remind himself that he has way more hair than most people his age. He's over 60, and a lot of the 40- and 50-year-old scientists are going bald.
“Yes, sir,” I said. I stayed very polite, even though I'd been asking to see him all day. The more I thought about my theory, the more I knew I was right. All the oxygen problems could be solved. “I think I might know what's wrong with the solar panels.”
Behind his desk, Director Steven leaned back in his chair. His office is the size of most entire minidomes. He also has framed paintings of Earth scenes, like sunsets and mountains, on his wall. No one else has paintings. Cargo's too expensive. “So tell me, young Tyce, what do you know that all our experts here don't know?”
By his tone of voice, I knew right then that I should have had Rawling bring my idea to Director Steven.
Rawling once told me that some people didn't like me simply because my unexpected birth here had taken time and resources that weren't planned. He had explained that Director Steven was one of those people, especially because he acted like the entire Mars Project was his. The trouble was, this far from Earth, with him as commander, it basically was his project. So everybody had to do what he said.
“Sir,” I began. Now that I was here, it was too late to turn around. “I don't think the problem is with the solar panels.”
“I see,” he said sarcastically, running his fingers through his hair. “So it's just our imagination that the dome is running out of oxygen.”
It wasn't fair that he treated me like I was just a stupid kid, not when I'd been forced to think and act like all the adults around me for as long as I could remember. If any of the adults in the dome had come in, Director Steven at least would have listened to them with respect. But I knew I couldn't say this, of course, or he'd get mad and tell me to leave. My point was too important.
“What I mean,” I said as firmly as I could, “is that the techies have taken the solar panels down twice from the railings and found absolutely nothing wrong with them.”
“Thank you for telling me something I already know,” Director Steven said mockingly. “You now have three minutes of my time left.”
I tried to keep a polite smile on my face. “If it's not the panels that are broken in some way, then maybe the problem is the sunlight.”
“This is good,” he said, leaning forward. “Very good.”
“It is?”
“You have been kind enough to help me understand this completely.” Director Steven shook his head in disgust. “Now I've discovered we have to fix the sun.”
“Sir, that's not what I mean. What if there is something blocking the panels from getting the sun?”
“Clouds? On Mars? Hardly. There's no atmosphere. Although that's our goal, we still haven't even found plants that will survive out there long enough to begin to create an atmosphere.”
“What about the dome itself?” I asked. “In my virtual-reality computer sessions, the protective visors get scratched because of sandstorms. Maybe over the years Martian sand has done that to the dome, and less sunlight is getting through.”
Director Steven stood abruptly and strode out from behind his desk. In his white lab coat, he appeared even larger than he was. From my wheelchair, I had to lean my head back to look up at him. I hated doing that because it made me feel smallâand weak.
“Do you think we are stupid?” he thundered, looming over me. “Do you think when we designed this project we didn't think of that? The glass of the dome is as hard as diamonds. It was made to withstand the impact of small asteroids. A million years from now, the glass will still be as clear as the day it was made.”
“I ⦠I ⦠was only trying to help,” I said.
“You think you know all the answers,” he said, his face red and furious. “Instead, you know nothing.” He leaned down in front of me and stared closely into my face. “Dr. McTigre keeps me informed of your progress in the virtual-reality program, you know. He told me how you failed yesterday. How the scientist attacked you instead of letting you lead all of them across the plains in a sandstorm. And let me tell you why. It's because you didn't bother to explain how you could do it. You just assumed if you told them something, that's the way it was and they should listen. You should have learned yesterday that that technique doesn't workâbefore you wasted my time today. You're supposed to be smarter than that. Or are you?”
I kept my head as steady as I could. I knew nothing I could say would make a difference. I should have known better than to try to talk to Director Steven on my own. I should have remembered that he'd made it clear on numerous occasions that he couldn't be bothered by meâand that my presence alone under the dome had already bothered him enough over the years.
Director Steven's cold blue eyes bored into mine. “Now please leave,” he said flatly. “I have better things to do than let some teenager tell me how to run my project.”
I went. Slowly. My wheelchair seemed like it was glued in place. Were my arms that dead already from lack of oxygen?
I'm not sure if I cared. My ears burned from anger and embarrassment.
Why did Director Steven seem to bristle every time he saw me? Did he dislike me that much? And if so, why? Was there something wrong with me?
That night, after a very quiet and short supper, I decided to go up to the third deck, where the telescope was, because I wanted to be alone.
The main level of the dome held the minidomes and labs. One level up, a walkway about 10 feet wide circled the inside of the dome walls. People mostly used the walkway for exercise, jogging in circles above the main floor below. Not me, of course. The techies had built a ramp for my wheelchair, and the only reason I ever went to the second level was to reach the third and smallest level of the dome, which anyone, including me in a wheelchair, could reach by a narrow catwalk from the second level.
This third level was centered at the top the dome. The floor of it was a circle only 15 feet wide. It hung directly below the ceiling, above the exact middle of the main level. Here, on the deck of the third level, a powerful telescope was perched beneath a round bubble of clear, thick glass that stuck up from the black glass that made up the rest of the dome. From there, the massive telescope gave an incredible view of the solar system.
It was getting more difficult to push my wheelchair, and I needed to stop for breath a couple times. Each gasp I took reminded me of how little time was left before the oxygen ran out.
I wondered if I was breaking the new rule about resting to save oxygen. No one was jogging on the walkway. Below me, as I slowly wheeled up the catwalk, it was quiet on the main level of the dome. Most people were inside their minidomes. But I decided that if I didn't have long to live, I didn't want to waste time I could spend with the telescope.
Tonight I not only wanted to take my mind off the oxygen problem in this death trap, but I wanted to forget what Director Steven had said to me. Maybe I did think I was too smart. Maybe I did bug people. Wondering about all that and thinking about how useless and young he thought I was, I didn't like myself much, either.
The best way to escape the dome and myself was with the telescope on the third level. Because if my crippled body wasn't able to take me places, at least my eyes and mind and imagination could. For me, the telescope was freedom, something that let me travel a billion miles across the universe with a single sweep across the sky.
I rolled into place at the eyepiece of the telescope where the dome astronomer usually sat. I allowed myself a sad smile as I lifted my hands to the controls. The one good thing about useless legs was that you never needed to look for a chair.
I let out a deep breath as I reached the telescope controls. The power to the computer controls of the telescope was down as part of the director's energy-saving program, but I knew how to find different stars and planets without the computer map. After all, the solar system was my backyard.
I brought the telescope into focus. The black of the universe and the brightness of the millions and millions of stars hit me with incredible clearness. It was a clearness no one would ever see on Earth, where the air and the clouds and the particles of pollution take away the sharpness of telescopes. But not on Mars, which has nearly no atmosphere. When you sit at the telescope, it feels like you can reach out and grab the stars.
In the next 30 seconds, Terror and Panic passed by me.
To anyone under the dome, that was an old joke. The names of the two moons of Mars are Deimos and Phobos. These Greek names translate to
terror
and
panic
, because Mars was named after an ancient god of war.
But don't think of these moons like the one that circles Earth. Deimos and Phobos are tiny moons, chunks of rock not even 20 miles across. They are lumpy, not round, and they look like potatoes with craters. To us on Mars, Deimos rises in the east and sets in the west. Phobos rises in the west and sets in the east. They move across the sky in opposite directions. I never got tired of watching one moon pass by the other.
Tonight, though, I wasn't on the telescope deck to moonwatch. I wanted to see the planet Earth.
I turned the controls and fine-tuned the focus.
There it was. A beautiful blue ball, streaked with swirling white as storms crossed the face of it. And behind it, the round white moon, bouncing the sunlight and redirecting it here to Mars.
I smiled sadly again. The 200 of us here on Mars were so far away. So alone in the vast solar system. To me, the Earth of DVD-gigaroms seemed so foreign but niceâa place of people laughing and crying and falling in love and having picnics in parks and watching the sunset behind mountains and crossing oceans and flying through the air on planes.
Because of the oxygen problem, I'd never have a chance to see any of that. Or any of the other incredible things about living on a planet that Mom says God designed to make the existence of humans possible.
I blinked and went back to the telescope. Thinking about what I'd never see, I wanted to cry. But I wouldn't allow myself to do it. Because out of all the people under this dome, I was the only kid and used to being alone. I'd learned early not to cry, even when I felt like it. I'd learned early that I'd have to fend for myself. Other than my mom and Rawling, nobody in the colony paid much attention to me.
I stared at the Earth and the moon, hanging in the black of a universe that was so big no human mind could truly understand its size. I sat there a long time, thinking and wondering and feeling sad thoughts.
Then someone tapped my shoulder.
It scared me so badly that I would have jumped out of my wheelchair if my legs had worked.
“Relax, Tyce,” Rawling said. “It's only me. I thought I'd find you here.”
“Yeah,” I said, my heart still pounding. “You did.”
“Look,” he said in a strange tone. “We've got to talk. It's about a secret your mom and I have kept from you for a long, long time.”
Below us, it was dim. Shadows darkened the rows of plants.
The minidomes looked like black eggs rising from the ground. Only the hum of the electrical generators broke the silence. And too soon, when all the electricity died, there would be no noise at all.
“Outside the dome â¦,” Rawling started to say in a low voice. He had pulled a chair near the telescope and sat in it facing me directly so our eyes were at the same height. “What does it take for a human to survive outside the dome?”
“I thought you were going to tell me aâ”
“Outside the dome,” he said again, “what does it take for a human to survive?” He spoke firmly, like he was quizzing me and wasn't going to say another thing until I answered.
“With or without a covered platform buggy?” I asked. The Mars Project has two of them. These monstrous machines ride on huge rubber tires that don't sink in the Martian sand because gravity is less here than on Earth.