Stranded (A stand-alone SF thriller) (The Prometheus Project Book 3) (14 page)

This had given Alyssa her idea.

She would train bees in this same way to find missing persons, be they fugitives, campers lost in the woods, or kidnapping victims. The bees could be turned into tiny, flying bloodhounds. They could be given the scent of people who were lost and rewarded with sugar-water when they found them.

Alyssa immediately began to research honeybees. She soon decided that early fall would be the perfect time to proceed. It was just before bees stopped being active. They wouldn’t fly when the temperature was fifty or below, which could be a problem on certain fall days, but this was also a season during which pollen was limited. A time when bees turned to other sources of food, like open garbage cans at outdoor parks. In the early fall they would be less distracted by pollen and nectar and more desperate for a perfect food source like sugar-water.

Alyssa learned that John Grace, a farmer who lived only a few miles away, was also a bee-keeper. After explaining her idea to him he had agreed to let her use his bees as test subjects. He used a variety that was on the calm side and wouldn’t sting unless they were threatened.

When their grandmother had taken the girls back to Chicago a month earlier for a brief visit, Alyssa had asked one of Kelsey’s tennis opponents, a girl named Lexi, to collect some of her sweat in a vial after the match. Since Alyssa and Kelsey were doing the experiments, they couldn’t use their own sweat or it would mess up the results.

Back in Brewster, Alyssa diluted her disgusting container of Lexi-sweat with water and filled a large perfume bottle. The bottle had a rubber bulb attached to it. Squeezing the bulb would cause a fine mist of Lexi-sweat to shoot from the container.

Next Alyssa used this sweat to train a hive of honeybees. For six days straight she stood by the hive and sprayed the diluted Lexi-sweat into the air just before putting out a pie-tin full of delicious sugar-water.

Then, for the past three days, she and her sister had conducted experiments to determine how well the bees had been trained. The sisters had ventured one, two and three-hundred yards away from the hive. Each time they would stand by a tree or large rock with their camcorder and document that the bees had no interest in the tree or rock at all. Then they would spray some Lexi-sweat on these objects, and within minutes the bees would come swarming—waiting for their reward. Thousands of them. Every time. It was the coolest thing ever.

Their experiment would have two parts. In Phase
One they would train the bees to swarm around the primary source of a scent. In Phase Two, which was far more difficult, they would train the bees to swarm twenty yards
above
the source rather than right on it. Alyssa had reasoned that any missing person who suddenly had thousands of bees swarming around them would be freaked out for sure. She wanted to use bees to find missing persons, not to give them heart attacks.

Tomorrow at noon they were set to videotape their first field test of Phase One. They would start at the hive and begin hiking, taking the perfume bottle of diluted Lexi-sweat with them. Every half mile they would spray minute amounts of the sweat into the air to help guide the bees to the source. After three miles they would stop and spray a far larger dose of the Lexi-sweat on a tree. If the bees were able to find this tree three miles away and swarm to the most concentrated region of Lexi-sweat, they would consider the test a success.

They had planned a practice run for this afternoon to make sure the bees behaved as expected, which would include the testing of different camera angles to be sure the video they took would be as polished as possible.

That was the plan, at least. Now Kelsey didn’t know what was going on. Her sister was acting very strangely. “Alyssa, why are you so negative about our project all of a sudden? You were so psyched about it. What happened?”

“I’ve realized there are problems I didn’t think of before.”

“Like what?”

“Like even if the bees do find a missing person, how are you going to find
the bees
once they have? How are you going to keep up with them when they fly off miles away?”

Kelsey thought for several long seconds. “Didn’t you say the military was attaching tiny radio transmitters to bees? What about doing that?”

Alyssa considered. “Yeah, I guess you could,” she said. “Good thinking.” She paused. “But there are other problems, too. In real life, when someone is missing, the police take one of their dirty socks or something and have a bloodhound smell it. Then the bloodhound begins tracking them. But the bees don’t know they’re supposed to swarm around
any
scent you put under their noses, just the scent they’ve been trained with. So are you going to spend a week or two training them to swarm for each particular person? By the time they’re trained it will be too late.”

Kelsey frowned. “How come we didn’t think of that before?”

“Probably because it was a cool idea and we were amazed that it was working. I mean, the project will still be awesome. But not awesome enough. The judges will see the problems with using this in real life.” She shook
her head. “There’s another thing we should have considered. You can load a bloodhound into a car and drive it fifty miles away, but how are you going to do that with an entire beehive?”

“So … what are you saying?” said Kelsey in disappointment. “That we shouldn’t finish the project?”

“No. We should still do it. The judges will still be impressed. It’s just that we have to come up with a second part. A part using
individual
bees, like they did at Los Alamos. We have to think of some other cool thing we can train them to do.”

“Like what?”

“I have no idea,” mumbled Alyssa. Then she brightened. “But I did find out today that Ryan Resnick knows a lot about conditioning,” she said. “I’m thinking of asking him to help.” She paused. “I think you know his sister, Regan.”

Kelsey nodded.

“What do you think of her?”

“She’s nice. Real friendly, but kind of weird in a way, too. I can’t really explain it. And she seems to know a lot of things I don’t think they teach in school.”

Interesting, thought Alyssa. Ryan’s sister sounded a lot like him. These two were definitely unique. For some reason a TV show popped into her head in which a brother and sister from another planet were attending school on Earth. Nah, she thought, they weren’t
that
odd.

“I know what you mean,” said Alyssa. “Ryan can be
a bit strange sometimes also. But still, I think I …” She paused for several seconds. “I think I like him.”

“Like him, like him?” said Kelsey.

Alyssa smiled. “Yeah,” she admitted. “A lot, actually.”

“Really?”
said Kelsey with tremendous interest. She raised her eyebrows. “Do you think he can really help the project?”

“Maybe. He doesn’t think the same way everyone else does. Maybe that’s what we need.” She paused. “I’ll ask him for ideas and see what happens. In the meanwhile, we can practice training bees one at a time. I got a bunch of them from Mr. Grace on my way home from school. They’re in the refrigerator.”

“The refrigerator?”

“Yeah. If you lower their body temperature they become dazed, so you can strap them into tiny harnesses without them getting away or stinging you. By the time we get back they should be numb enough for us to work with.”

“By the time we get back from what?” said Kelsey.

“From our experiment. Like I said, it still makes sense to finish our project like we planned.”

“What’s the point? Isn’t it too late now?”

“Maybe,” said Alyssa. “But it’s supposed to stay in the high fifties until about seven o’clock tonight. If it gets too dark for this to work, so what? We’ll still get some practice for tomorrow and have a nice hike. I
hate
this house. The less time we spend in it, the better.”

Kelsey nodded. “Yeah. You can say that again.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Alyssa, rising from her chair. She and Kelsey left the kitchen and began gathering what they would need for their immanent test.

A few minutes later they heard a surprised shriek coming from the kitchen—from their grandmother.

“Alyssa,”
she shouted angrily just after her scream had stopped. “Could you come here for a minute?”

Kelsey turned toward her sister and grinned. “Let me guess,” she said. “You didn’t tell Grandma about your new pets.”

Despite being in a bad mood, Alyssa laughed. “Uh-oh,” she said, rushing off toward the kitchen. Her grandmother had lived a long time, but Alyssa was willing to bet she had never found forty bees in the fridge before. “Coming Grandma,” she shouted, a broad smile still on her face. “Whatever you do, make sure you don’t eat any of those. I need them.”

C
HAPTER
16
From Bad to Worse

R
egan listened as her parents discussed strategies for rescuing Ryan. But as clever as they were they could think of no way to cross the glowing molten sea. Finally they gave up.

Regan had never seen her father cry, but he did on this occasion. His son was in grave danger and he was powerless to help him. Her mother just became strangely silent and her eyes burned with a frightening rage.

Thirty minutes later the predators returned.

One by one they came, until more than a dozen different species were represented. Along with the gray wolf-things they had faced there were armored creatures, clawed creatures, and creatures with eight-inch fangs. There were reptilian creatures the size of hippos with heads crowned in twenty-inch spikes. Carnivores
that lumbered like bears but had the faces and teeth of a
Tyrannosaurus rex
. Hairy spider-creatures the size of small dogs that shot bolts of electricity at the barrier. Tentacled animals with razor sharp claws at the end of each of their ten snake-like arms. Brightly colored creatures that expanded like accordions and shot poison at the barrier from glands on their throats. Large, furless predators with kangaroo-like legs whose powerful kicks would surely have broken through the barrier had not the electric shocks discouraged their attempts. Animals with powerful tails ending in massive balls of thick bone that could be used as devastating clubs. And even animals that launched projectiles, like porcupine needles, from slots in their heads.

And every single one of them had a common goal: get inside the barrier and kill anything human. The approach of nightfall did nothing to discourage them and their growls and roars and hisses and clicks and screeches and snarls were unrelenting. Each tried to throw themselves through the glowing green barrier and each received a harsh shock for their efforts. This seemed to only make them that much more eager to reach the humans.

Miguel and Cam were still lying on the ground about twenty yards from the rest of the expedition. The group thought leaving them alone, away from loud voices and at a range that wouldn’t tempt them to weaken themselves by contributing to any conversations, would be
helpful as they began to recuperate. And they were right, especially since the remaining, healthy members of the expedition were at each other’s throats. Their endless bickering was loud, and savage in its intensity.

Regan knew the team was falling apart, just when they needed each other the most. Her father was detached, as if he didn’t care anymore, and her mother was more combative than Regan had ever seen her, sticking up for her husband and family.

Strangely, the wildlife seemed to ignore Cam and Miguel. The predators focused on the main group. None of the assorted beasts tried to throw themselves at the barrier near the two members of security. Only when Amanda Resnick brought them food and checked on their bandages did a number of the snarling beasts peel themselves away to stalk that part of the barrier—leaving as soon as she did.

Regan wanted to check in on her brother in the worst way. But she was afraid of distracting him at just the wrong moment. That was the last thing he needed. Besides, he had said he would contact her to report.

She lifted her yellow and black backpack and wandered to the opposite end of the shield to be alone. She plopped down on the ground and pulled a small white wristwatch from the front pocket of the nylon bag. It showed the time in Pennsylvania. A place to which she would never return.

She frowned and thought of Ryan once again as the incessant arguing between the adults became even louder.

She would wait five minutes, no more. Then she would contact her brother.

C
HAPTER
17
A New Hypothesis

“R
yan,” broadcast Regan as loudly as she could.

“Are you still okay?”

Several long seconds passed.
“I told you I’d let you know!”
he barked.

“I’m worried about you, Ryan.”

“Well you should be!”

“What’s happening?”

“You tell me.”

“Okay. Cam and Miguel are recovering a little but they’re still really weak. Mom and Dad are worried to death about you and blaming themselves that you got cut off from us. And most of the team members are still acting like crazed idiots. Dad’s still the leader, but I’m not sure how long that will last. Donna, Bob, and Eric all seem like they can’t wait to take over.”

“So you’ve got a Lord of the Flies thing happening, only with adults.”

“Lord of the Flies?”

“It’s a book,”
explained Ryan irritably.

“I haven’t read it.”

“You will,”
snapped Ryan, but as he thought about this further he laughed bitterly.
“Then again, maybe you won’t. Unless someone brought a copy in their backpack.”
He paused.
“Okay. Thanks for the depressing report. Now go away!”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on with you,”
insisted Regan, trying not to be hurt by her brother’s words.