Ambush (6 page)
He hit the button.
At the far end of the air lock, the door slid open. And a white puff of vapor took away all the air that Mom and Dad could breathe.
Dad pulled Mom toward him, as if he could shield her from the vicious cold vacuum of the Martian atmosphere. He buried his face in her hair.
They were so close that if I could have put my hand through the window, I would have been able to touch both of them. Yet I was helpless to do anything but watch.
I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible. “There is nothing I can tell you,” I said to Dr. Jordan. “If there were, I would tell you now.”
“I think you are lying to me.”
“Put me in the air lock instead of them. It's not their fault I don't know what you want.”
Dr. Jordan studied my face.
I lifted my eyes briefly to his, then watched Mom and Dad again. He clutched her, and her arms held him just as tight. How much longer could they hold their breath? I wondered if it would help to tell Dr. Jordan about the note and tonight's meeting. But that wasn't what he wanted. Still â¦
“What do you want?” I pleaded. “At least give me the chance to answer you.” I was ready to throw away the only hope I saw for any of this. The robot pack I'd found under the towels.
Mom and Dad fell to their knees.
Dr. Jordan continued to study my face. “Fine then.” He hit the button to close the outer door lock. When it was shut, he opened the inner door lock. Oxygen-filled air from inside the dome whooshed into the air lock.
“Mom!” I shouted. “Dad!”
“Tyce!” Dad croaked.
Dr. Jordan pushed my wheelchair away from the window as Mom and Dad struggled to their feet. “Bring them back in,” he told the security guy. “I don't want to waste any hostages. If they die, it will be on video so that all of Earth can see what happens if they don't do as we demand.” He began to wheel me away.
I twisted frantically, trying to look back.
“Are you all right?” I heard Dad yell.
“Yes!” I shouted.
“Silence,” Dr. Jordan said. “Or I'll put them back in there.”
I bit my lower lip to keep from crying. They'd nearly died, yet Dad was concerned about how
I
was doing. It was that kind of sacrificial love that Mom and Dad had for me that had first convinced me there must be a Godâand that he did care about me.
Seconds later, we were in the corridor leading back to the storage room. When we reached the storage room that was my prison, the other security guy stood from his chair in front.
Dr. Jordan shook his head and smiled sadly for my benefit. “I could almost admire your stubbornness. It's a pity you aren't one of ours.”
One of ours?
What did that mean?
Then Dr. Jordan's smile vanished as abruptly as the air had been sucked out of the air lock. “I'm wondering if you out-bluffed me. So tomorrow I'm going to put them in the air lock again. But this time I promise I won't let them out alive unless I get what I want from you.” Back came the smile.
“Let him out once for a bathroom break,” Dr. Jordan said to the security guy. “Just once. That's it until morning. He can brood in the darkness about how his silence is going to kill his parents.”
Hours later I was thirsty.
They had left water with me, but I hadn't touched any of it. With a meeting at midnight, I didn't want to risk the possibility of filling my bladder.
Those hours of thirst gave me plenty of time to think and wonder in my wheelchair in the silent, dark isolation of the storage room.
Was Ashley somehow alive? Or was someone setting me up? If it was someone else, why?
One part of me desperately wanted to believe it was Ashley. I'd found the silver cross on my wheelchair, and only she could have left it there, right? Yet I'd seen her fly the Hammerhead into a moon. I'd seen the explosion, and later I'd used the dome telescope to see the crater the dome had named Ashley's Crater. If Ashley was alive, why was she in hiding? And why hadn't she secretly found a way to talk to me in the days since the explosion? Maybe someone else had stolen the silver cross from her before she died, and that someone just wanted me to believe Ashley was somewhere under the dome. But if that was the case, why?
All my hope hung on one single thing: the note. It had been signed with the shape of the cross of Ashley's earring. As if she had really placed it in my hand while I was sleeping. But that would have been impossible. The security guards would have seen her go into the storage room. I would have woken up as the door was opened. So I couldn't believe it was Ashley.
If not Ashley, then who?
It seemed that only Dr. Jordan or Blaine Steven had the authority to direct the security guards. But how could Jordan or Steven have done it without waking me up? Why would either one give me the note? And the robot pack? Was one betraying the other by giving me the robot pack? Or was it just another way to try to get me to tell them what I didn't know?
What was it that Dr. Jordan wanted so badly?
Whatever was happening, I had a lot more to worry about than just myself. Rawling and the other three scientists were hours closer to running out of air. Mom and Dad were among the hostages and would face the air lock again tomorrow if I didn't give Jordan what he wanted. Almost 200 hostages were being used as a bargaining tool in Dr. Jordan's game of war. We were less than two days away from the shuttle launch that was necessary to supply the dome.
Far more important than all of our lives, however, was that the Mars Dome had to surviveâfor the future of millions and millions of people on Earth. Phase 1 had been to establish the dome, and we were now in Phase 2: growing plants outside the dome so more oxygen could be added to the atmosphere. Eventually people would be able to live on Mars.
That was long-term.
Now it seemed the short term was equally crucial. I knew enough about Earth politics to understand how easily wars started. World War I had begun because one person in a small European country was assassinated. Given the unrest of that time, it had been like a spark set among dry grass, and fighting had spread across Europe from there, dragging in the United States too. Now, with some of the World United countries ready to rebel, a hostage taking on Mars might be all it would take to start another world war. How many would die then?
I was too miserable in my thoughts to even bother juggling.
Mom once told me that it's easier to hear God in quiet times. A nudge in your heart, maybe, or new thoughts that help you deal with your problem.
It was easy to be silent in the storage room.
I prayed, asking God to help. But more importantly I asked him to help me be as strong as possible, no matter what happened.
Then from the silent darkness around me came a tiny voice, floating near my head. “Tyce,” it said from thin air, “listen to me without speaking!”
My head and neck froze, but my eyeballs went side to side and up and down.
“God?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
After all, I
had
been praying to God. But somehow I hadn't expected him to answer. Why would God want to talk to me out of all the people in the universe? On the other hand, maybe the voice was just my imagination. Was I going crazy, locked up in this dark room?
“Quiet!” the tiny, floating voice said quickly. “Don't bring the security guards in here!”
It has to be God,
I thought with a quick intake of breath. “But you could stop them so easily thatâ”
“Quiet, Tyce! Listen! I don't have much time!”
“Okay,” I whispered, feeling weird talking to God like this.
Had
I lost my mind?
A much louder voice interrupted. From outside the door. One of the security guys. “Kid, what do you want?”
“Huh?” I asked.
The door opened. It was night, and most of the dome lights had been dimmed. The guard stepped halfway into the storage room, which meant he almost filled it. “What do you want? Is it time for your bathroom break?”
“No,” I answered.
“What's going on then?”
“Just talking to myself.” Was I just talking to myself? Had I imagined the voice?
“Well, knock it off,” the guard grunted, then slammed the door shut.
The silence returned to the darkness. I waited and waited, wondering if I would hear the voice again.
It came. Floating in the air. “See? Told you not to make any noise. Are you ready to listen?”
If it was God speaking, he didn't have to point out that he was always right. But I wasn't going to say it. Not if it would bring the guard back and prove God right again.
“Tyce, take out the robot pack. Set it on the floor.”
If I do that and the guard walks in â¦
“Take out the robot pack. Set it on the floor.”
I
was
losing my mind.
“There is hardly any time left. Do it!”
Slowly I leaned forward. The robot pack had been digging into my lower back for so long I was grateful to pull it loose. I hesitated, then finally leaned over and set it on the floor.
This is crazy. Really. If the guard walks in and finds it â¦
I waited for the voice to say something else. It didn't. I couldn't risk speaking again, so I couldn't even ask what was happening.
“Finished,” the quiet voice said a few minutes later. “You can take the robot pack again. Don't wait until midnight. Plans have changed. Instead, count to 2,000, then get into the robot body. And don't panic. Remember that. Don't panic at what you see.”
Panic?
“Butâ”
“Shhh. I'm gone.”
I waited for more.
Nothing came.
I began to count. I stopped counting briefly and did some math. Sixty seconds in a minute. So 2,000 seconds was roughly ⦠half an hour.
That's all I needed to wait to find freedom beyond the wheelchair and this dark, cramped storage room.
Finally I finished counting and leaned forward in my wheelchair. With difficulty, I reached behind me and fumbled with the connections until the robot mini-transmitter was securely attached to my neck-plug.
I hoped Ashley was the one who'd left the note and the robot mini-transmitter for me. I hoped she'd be near the robot when I took control of it.
But along with all my other worries, I now had one more.
What was there not to panic about when I finally got into the robot body?
Normally I'd be in the computer lab for any robot control activation. Rawling would insist on a checklist. He'd tell me it was just like flying, and preparation and safety had to be first.
He'd strap my body to the bed so I wouldn't accidentally move and break the connection. He'd warn me against any robot contact with electrical sources. He'd remind me to disengage instantly at the first warning of any damage to the robot's computer drive since harm to the computer circuits could spill over to harm my brain. And then he'd blindfold me, strap my head in position, and soundproof me.
This was different. I'd never used the mini-transmitter that Ashley did. Good thing it didn't need to connect through the antenna sewn into my jumpsuit. Dr. Jordan, of course, had ripped out that plug.
I assumed this mini-transmitter was programmed to her robot, and the controls would be similar to mine.
I assumed, too, that sheâor whoever had left the note and mini-transmitterâwas waiting near the robot to meet me as soon as I began to control the robot body.
In other words, very, very soon I'd find out who'd left the note and mini-transmitter for me.
I closed my eyes and leaned back. I hit the power button and waited for the familiar sensation of entering the robot computer.
In the darkness and silence and intensity of my concentration, it came.
I began to fall off a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.
I kept falling and falling and fallingâ¦.
I'd expected to see the walls of minidomes, the floors, the roof of the dome. I'd expected to see a personâhopefully Ashley.
Instead, the images sent to my brain were unreal and bizarre.
Two large, dark caves filled my whole vision. Below those caves were two horizontal rows of huge, shiny, white, rectangular rocks. They seemed to be stuck into the face of a weird, smooth mountain.
What scared me the most was that the mountain began to move. And when the mountain moved, it roared! A hot wind rushed ahead with the roar.
I remembered the warning given to me by the tiny, floating voice:
“Don't panic.”
That warning was the only thing that kept me from screaming in fear.
I watched the mountain move more and told myself that none of this was actually happening to me in the wheelchair, but to a robot body. I told myself the robot body digitally translated the sound waves and the sensation of heat and the pressure of the wind, which my brain retranslated as actual events. I was safe, even if the robot body was not.