Final Battle (20 page)

“That should be easy to answer. We just track the footprints backward.”

We found the answer two miles away. Over a hill. Hidden from the dome.

When we found the answer, we didn't bother wasting any time. We disconnected immediately, leaving the robots near what we had found.

Back in the computer lab, we took off our helmets and helped each other disconnect.

Ashley helped me into my wheelchair since my legs were still so weak. Usually I insisted on pushing myself. Not this time.

She raced my wheelchair forward, from the computer lab toward Rawling's office.

We had to talk to him as soon as possible.

CHAPTER 14

Forty-five minutes later, Mom, Dad, and Rawling stood behind my wheelchair in Rawling's office. Ashley sat beside me. The lights were dim, and a large TV screen was flickering.

“Ready?” Rawling asked.

He must have taken our silence as a yes since he hit a button on his remote. The screen darkened briefly. Then it showed the eerie reds and oranges of the Martian landscape.

I knew what we would see. This visual input had just been recorded through my robot's computer. Because the robot was on wheels, it was a steady image. It showed the footprints that Ashley and I had followed. It showed the hill we had first climbed and then descended. And, on the other side, hidden beneath an outcropping, it showed what we had found.

A small shuttle ship.

Dad whistled. “That's a two-person ship. Mainly used on the Moon to take people up to orbiting spaceships.”

Next the visual lurched a little. My robot had rolled into a small depression as I brought it in for a closer look. Then the visual zoomed in close on a symbol on the side of the shuttle.

“Manchurian!” Mom exclaimed. “That's the shape of a Manchurian flag.”

The image on the television suddenly went dark. That was the point where Ashley and I had decided to disengage from our robots and find Rawling immediately.

Rawling moved to the wall of his office and hit the light switch. “As you know,” he said, pacing the floor, “Ashley and Tyce found this with their robots an hour ago. Unless we are reading this totally wrong, it looks like someone landed in the shuttle—”

“But from where?” Dad interrupted. “Something that small can't travel more than 1,000 miles. It doesn't hold the oxygen and food needed to travel here from Earth or the Moon.”

“I can't guess where at this point,” Rawling answered. “For now, let's just stick with what we know from the evidence.”

“The footprints led away from the abandoned shuttle toward the dome,” Mom said.

“More specifically, toward the point of puncture of the dome,” Rawling added. “We can guess that the person used some device, maybe an explosive, to punch the hole through about head height. But why? And then what?”

I had a mental image of a man with a space suit walking into the tunnel of the dome. And then the answer hit me. “To create a diversion. Earlier we couldn't figure out why someone would make a puncture that was so easy to repair. Because it only made for temporary confusion. And it also guaranteed that the main entrance to the dome would be opened for that person as the repair crews went out.”

I told them about the person in the space suit. “That must have been the space-shuttle pilot. All he or she had to do was get inside, never to be noticed with all the new people and new activity. There are plenty of places to hide if no one is looking for you.”

“And I'll bet once he got inside,” Rawling said, speaking slowly as he thought aloud, “the next thing he did was disable the communications system.”

Mom gripped my shoulder. “I don't suppose you had your robot's visual on record when you approached this person.”

“No,” I said. “I was just trying to get some freedom. Then the—” I was almost about to say “headache hit me.” But so far I'd only told Rawling. This definitely wasn't the time to burden Mom and Dad with something so minor, compared to the crisis of the dome.

“Then the … ?” Mom prompted.

Then came a horrible thought. “Dad, remember in space when you told me the Manchurians would never destroy the dome itself?”

He nodded. “I said the fleet would never fire any weapons on the dome. That they would want to be able to land and send in soldiers because it was important they get Mars with the dome and the generators intact.”

“And you said you couldn't figure out why the fleet would follow us, knowing we have the surface-to-space atomic weapons to protect us.”

“The triggers!” Ashley said. “Stolen. Now the missiles won't work. Do you think … ?”

Suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle snapped together in my brain. “I think I can guess why the fleet is on its way. They've sent someone ahead. One person. And he was to be inside the dome. Preparing it for the arrival of the fleet.”

CHAPTER 15

“Ugly,” Ashley said at 3:30 that afternoon.

“Hey,” I protested. She had just arrived at my minidome, where I had been waiting for her after eating a quick lunch. “This is me you're talking about.”

In my lap were a blanket, a pair of binoculars, and a stuffed pillowcase. Sewn onto the pillowcase were two arms made of tubes of cloth filled with rags. Mom had helped me sew a crude head, made of a smaller stuffed pillowcase, on top.

I held it up for more inspection. “For half a body, it might just work as a decoy. Think the guy in the space suit will believe it's me?”

“Let's hope so. You ready?”

I jammed the half-body back on top of the binoculars in my lap. I covered it with a blanket. “Ready. Take me to the top.”

Ashley wheeled me to the observatory on the third-level deck of the dome. It was a short trip. After all, the total area of the dome was only about four of Earth's football fields. 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. The third level, centered at the top of the dome, could be reached only by a narrow catwalk from the second level.

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 a powerful telescope 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 my favorite place in the dome. I'd spent a lot of hours there—observing the stars, asteroids, and planets. And also asking “why” questions about God and the universe. Every time I was up here, I marveled again at how God had created everything—all the “matter”—and then made it work together, in some kind of perfect harmony that scientists could find no natural explanation for. It had been through all my hours spent in the observatory, as well as all the crises I'd faced on Mars before going to Earth, that I'd come to believe that I had a soul—a part of me invisible to science and medicine. A part of me that feels love, happiness, hope, and sadness. A part of me that knows God loves us and yet still wonders why God can allow bad things to happen to us … like the pending Manchurian invasion.

I shook off the deep thoughts.

Ashley parked the wheelchair in front of the telescope eyepieces. I set the brakes and lifted the blanket off me. I gave Ashley the binoculars, which she set on the floor.

“This is the tricky part,” I said, lifting the half-body out of my lap. “Can you prop this behind my back?”

I leaned forward. She quickly shoved the stuffed pillowcases between my back and the wheelchair, making sure the fake head was right behind my own head.

“Now the arms,” I said.

As we had planned beforehand, Ashley lifted the halfbody's arms to the telescope controls. She taped them in place, its arms wrapped around my face, to make sure we had the height and angle right—so the dummy would look like a real person. We wanted it at the telescope so I could look down on the dome from a more hidden position.

With the dummy in position, Ashley held my arms and helped lower me beneath the dummy's arms as I wiggled feet forward out of the wheelchair. It was strange to actually feel the floor of the observatory against my legs. Even though my muscles were weak, I was able to roll over onto my belly. I glanced upward at the wheelchair.

Ashley was already moving the dummy's head forward against the eyepieces. She taped it in place too. “What do you think?”

“People hardly ever think to look up here anytime,” I said, “so we're probably safe 'til nightfall.” Right now it was 3:30 in the afternoon. The weak sunlight was already fading. It couldn't penetrate the black superglass of the dome. “And if anyone does look up here, it's dim enough that I think the outline will fool anyone into thinking I'm still in my wheelchair. Just to be sure, take a look once you get down, and call me on the wrist buzzer.”

Ashley knelt beside me. She had carried two wrist buzzers—small communicating devices that looked just like watches. She gave me one and kept the other.

“See you in a while,” she said. “I'll come back later as planned to help you back into your wheelchair. In the meantime, if you need anything, just buzz me.”

“Thanks.”

As she left, I crawled to the edge of the observatory floor with my binoculars beside me.

Two minutes later the wrist buzzer crackled.

“Fooled me,” Ashley said. “And I knew what to look for.”

“Good,” I answered.

Now I was ready to watch as long as it took to spot the intruder. Even better, I'd have a surprise waiting!

CHAPTER 16

I surveyed the area below.

I could see the minidomes and the experimental labs and open areas, where equipment was maintained. Some people were using the second-level walkway for exercise, jogging in circles above the main floor below.

The dome now held the original 200 people, plus the other 50 who had arrived with the space fleet. In terms of living space, it was a lot more crowded. But as soon as the carbon-dioxide generators were built, expansion of the dome would be next. In the meantime, three research areas had been temporarily shut down.

In the first research area, a minidome had been erected as a huge dorm area for all 50 robot-control kids.

And the last two research areas had been converted to a computer area, holding cots and transmitters for all the kids when they were using their robot-control capabilities to work on the generators. According to strict instructions from the World United Federation, the kids were only allowed to control the robots in shifts of four hours a day. Then they were free to follow up on schoolwork and have playtime.

Right now, many of the kids were hooked up. As they lay on cots, each wore a helmet to block out the sights and sounds of the dome. Each was busy controlling a robot that was working at the carbon-dioxide generator site.

This time it wasn't any of the kids I was worried about. No, I was watching for an adult who was doing something unusual.

More specifically—although I hadn't told anyone because it seemed too dumb—I was watching for the one person I knew who had enough computer skills to hack his way into the mainframe computer. It was something he had done before. And even though I couldn't believe he had somehow returned, my gut told me he had to be the one responsible.

I had learned the hard way. Of anyone in the Terrataker terrorist group that served the Manchurians, he was the genius who didn't care how many people died for him to get his way.

His name was Luke Daab. He'd masqueraded as a maintenance engineer—a sort of janitor—on the
Moon Racer.
After planning to crash the spaceship into the sun, he'd escaped in one of the pods. He'd last been reported hiding out in the Manchurian Sector of the Moon, a place that gave him diplomatic immunity from the World United Federation military. Now, impossible as it seemed, I wouldn't have been surprised if I saw him in my binoculars.

So as the minutes ticked by, I scanned the floor below. Stray thoughts hit me. My stomach began to growl.

Ashley had been right to accuse me earlier of filling my head with things because I was in a body cast and had little else to do.

Only now I was glad about it. Because—despite Rawling's quick check that didn't show a tumor—if there was seriously something in my brain that was causing these headaches, at least I knew that dying wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to me.

Some people say that science points us away from God, but I've learned that isn't true. The more and more I've learned about science—and the creation of the universe— the easier it is to believe that God is behind it.

On this space trip, I'd been reading a lot more about astronomy. And I was discovering that some astronomers believed that science clearly showed God had made this universe.

Like this weird detail, for instance. Physics shows that in the beginning moments of the universe, energy produced matter and antimatter. It might sound like comic-book stuff, but when particles of matter and particles of antimatter touch, both are destroyed. Physicists say that what should have happened is that all matter should have been exploded by antimatter. No matter should have survived anywhere. In fact, this universe should have become merely space with a weak radiation below the energy of a single microwave oven.