Double Cross (14 page)
While I didn't get my looks from herâshe was tall and thin with dark hair and a beautiful faceâI definitely got my sense of sarcasm from her.
Normally her teasing worked, and Dad lightened up. Tonight he ignored her comment. That's when I knew he was really buggedâand that he, too, believed some sort of conspiracy was going on.
“Second,” Dad said, “I can't believe they shipped it here secretly just for the comet.”
Rawling, always a good listener, leaned forward.
“For starters,” Dad explained, “you know it takes eight months to get from Earth to here.”
Yet the shuttles only arrived once every three years. The reason was that pilots had to wait until the planetary orbits were close together. Planned right, the trip was only 50 million miles. But if a ship left Mars just as Earth was headed to the opposite side of its orbit, the trip would take double the time. Much of the three-year trip meant waiting either on Earth or on Mars. Dad would be leaving again soon, and I wouldn't see him for another three years. It was something I didn't want to think about.
“What I want to know, then,” Dad insisted, “is how the military people on Earth knew about the comet ahead of time. If I understand your explanations, Rawling, comets in the far reaches of the solar system are next to invisible until they get close to Saturn. At best, we have only two months' notice of its arrival beyond Mars. Yet the Hammerhead was sent on a shuttle nearly eight months ago. Did someone on Earth know 10 months ago that the comet would be a threat? If so, why wait this long to warn us? And why ship the Hammerhead secretly?”
“Maybe,” Mom said, “the Science Agency authorities didn't want people on Earth to panic. From all the reports, things are politically unstable. Maybe news of a killer comet would upset the balance.”
Mom and Dad both looked at Rawling.
“I'm afraid I can't answer those kinds of questions,” he said. “Believe me, I'm as frustrated as you are. I'm director of this dome. I should know about everything. But I wasn't informed about the cometâor the Hammerheadâuntil last week when Tyce began his training on the computer program. Let me point out that it must have taken at least a couple of years on Earth for the scientists to develop the flight-simulation computer program and even more time to build the Hammerhead. My gut feeling is that once they knew Tyce's operation let him handle virtual reality directly through his nervous system, they began work on the Hammerhead. And that was when Tyce was only six or seven years old!”
Dad stood. He crossed his arms as he stared down at Rawling. “When they started this program is the least of my concerns. What I'm really worried about is how little training he'll get with the Hammerhead before he heads out into space in a cigar tube!”
Rawling stood too. He didn't back down from Dad's glare. “I care about Tyce as much as you do.”
Mom got up quickly and pushed them apart. “Do you two have any idea what's happening here? You're both angry, and you're both looking to fight back against what's making you mad. Except you can't, because the people behind this aren't here. You two are friends. Don't let this destroy that. Especially when now is the time all of us have to work together.”
Dad kept glaring at Rawling. “I'm not going to kiss and make up with someone that ugly.”
Rawling glared back. “Think I'd let anyone with breath as bad as yours even get close?”
Then they both grinned.
Mom sighed. “Men.” She sat beside me and rested her hand on my arm. I patted her hand.
“I'm learning fast, Dad,” I said. “By the time the comet arrives in two months I don't think I'll have any problems with maneuvering the Hammerhead.”
Now it was Rawling's turn to sigh. “This is the part I really hate to bring to all of you.”
“Yes?” Mom's hand tightened on the muscles of my forearm.
“I just received another communication from Earth. They say that the Hammerhead's weapon system is going to need testing. If we don't do it now, we won't know whether it'll be effective when the comet is near.”
“So when is Tyce going up?” Dad demanded.
“Tomorrow,” Rawling said. “A small asteroid is making a loop that will come within five million miles of Mars.”
“Five million miles!” Mom exclaimed. “This isn't like sending someone to the store for milk and bread.”
“No,” Rawling answered. “It isn't. I wish I could see some way around it. But that asteroid is the only one that will be close enough in the next two months to test the Hammerhead.”
He eyeballed Dad. “I'm hoping you can take Tyce into orbit sometime in the afternoon. He'll have to make his first real run in the Hammerhead then.”
Normally I was asleep by 11:00. Normally I'd read from an e-book until I fell asleep.
Normally, though, I wouldn't wake up the next day to face the prospect of buckling myself into a thin tube of metal and traveling a couple of million miles. Alone. In an experimental space vehicle.
And normally I wouldn't be filled with sadness and anger. But I couldn't help but go over it again and again. It seemed like my best friend had betrayed me. Who else but Ashley knew that I was going to go into the flight-simulation program and blow up the moon as a way to defeat the other pilot? Who else would have pulled away as I approached the moon?
But if it was Ashley, that led to a bunch of other questions. How had she become part of the flight simulation? Why keep it secret?
So I didn't sleep.
At two thirty in the morning, after staring at the ceiling of the minidome all night, I lifted myself out of bed and into my wheelchair.
I was restless. Too restless to go to my computer and make journal entries. I silently rolled out of my room, out of our minidome, and into the hush of the big dome. The only sound was the gentle, distant whoosh of the air circulation pumps. It was dim, with most of the lights turned down. All the other minidomes were in shadow.
I had to talk to Ashley, but I wondered if I'd have the courage to knock on her minidome when I got there. Especially at three in the morning.
I rolled forward farther in the silence and dimness.
Halfway to the other minidome, I heard a strange whirring noise. It was barely noticeable above the air circulation pumps.
Maneuvering my wheelchair backward, I hid beside another minidome. I froze and waited.
The whirring noise grew louder.
Seconds later, I discovered what it was.
A robot. The high-tech one I'd seen the day I was outside the dome.
I followed.
I guessed that the newer model robot had video lenses to give it four-directional visuals. And that it could also sense my body heat. So I let it move down the path, well out of sight, before I rolled after it, keeping it in range by listening for the whirring of its motor.
I didn't have to follow far. Partly because the entire dome is a circle only 400 yards in diameter. And partly because the robot stopped almost immediately once it passed all the minidomes and reached the storage areas.
Slowly I rolled to the shadows at the edge of the last minidome and peered around the corner.
The robot stood in front of the locked room that held the Hammerhead. One of its sleek titanium arms reached toward the door handle. The titanium fingers gripped the handle and sheared it off.
I gasped quietly. I could tell this new robot had strength that doubled or tripled my own robot's.
The door swung open.
At this time of night, I knew the robot meant to damage the Hammerhead. But what could I do? If I went to get help, what might the robot do in the few minutes I was gone?
And yet there was no way I could sneak up on it. Not if it had infrared sensors like my own robot.
I leaped to a decision and rolled my wheelchair forward.
The robot must have sensed my body heat. Halfway across the short space between the storage area and the minidomes, it turned toward me. Even in the dim light, its silver skin gleamed.
“No closer,” it said quietly.
I had expected the odd monotone of synthetic vocal cords, like on my robot. But this one sounded very human.
I did not stop.
“Human, you are in peril of your life.”
I still did not stop.
“Turn around, human.”
I finally did stop, but I didn't turn around. I was only a few feet from the robot. Like mine, it was the height of a full-grown man, so I had to lean my head back to see straight into its forward video lens.
“Leave the Hammerhead alone,” I told it, “or I will disable you.”
I knew where to disable the robot. Or at least I hoped I knew where. Although it was a second-generation robot, I doubted the power source would be much different than mineâat the back, near the connection to its wheels. A simple tug on a main wire would disconnect the power from the robot's battery pack.
“Go away,” it said.
Instead, I closed the short distance between us.
In one swift move, the robot's left hand reached out and grabbed my throat. The titanium fingers tightened slightly, enough to keep me from speaking but not enough to choke me completely. I knew it had the strength to rip my head from my body.
This was my gamble. That I had it figured out right. That only one person under this dome was young enough to have had an operation to let her handle this robot by remote. If I was wrong, the robot hand around my throat would squeeze the life out of me.
“Human, this is your last chance. Blink twice to tell me you will leave.”
I blinked twice.
The robot hand dropped from my throat.
I was able to speak again. “I will leave, but only if you agree to meet me at the telescope. In five minutes.”
“Not possible, human.”
“Knock off this âhuman' stuff,” I said. “You know my name. Just like I know yours.”
Its hand reached for my throat again. I put up my arms, one on each side of my throat, so that its fingers couldn't reach all the way around.
“Listen,” I said, “I don't know what your game is. But if you want to stop me from disconnecting your power, you're going to have to kill me. And if you decide not to kill me, meet me at the telescope in five minutes.” I continued to stare into the unblinking eye of the video lens.
Finally that large titanium hand with its powerful, deadly fingers dropped.
In an instant, I rolled behind the robot and yanked loose its power cord.
“Hello, Ashley,” I said in a reserved tone when I rolled the final few feet onto the platform. “Nice that we could meet.”
So it
had
been her handling the robot.
She sat on the bench at the side of the telescope and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Shadows hid her face. Above us, through the small, clear-glass bubble, a million stars sprinkled the universe. Below us, the main level of the dome was completely quiet.
“Hello, Tyce. I expected you'd try to talk to me a lot earlier. Like maybe right after we finished the flight-simulator program.”
“Like right after I blew your torpedo into tiny bits of space garbage.”
“Something like that.” Ashley let out a long breath. “You knew back then, didn't you? When you told me that you were going to try blasting the moon as a way to get the
other pilot?”
“No. When I told you that, I was only guessing. I only knew for sure when the other pilot stopped following and waited for Phobos to explode. You're the only person who could have known I was going to try it. Just like you're the only person who knew I was going to try the heat-vent trick the time before. Only in the first combat mission, I still trusted you.”
I moved beside her and pointed at a small pack on her back. “The new computer remote?”
She nodded. “Wired into my plug. I can go anywhere with it.”
“How handy. I guess I'm using ancient technology. I need to be strapped to a bed.” I rolled away from her and stared up at the cold stars.
“How did you figure it out?” Ashley asked.
I didn't answer. I was too sad. Too bitter.
I did, however, have a long list of reasons. A while back, she'd asked if I was ready to go to Jupiter. She was half joking, but how could she have known unless she already knew about the Hammerhead? Then there was the fact that in my first combat mission, the other pilot knew I'd come out of a heat mushroom invisible, with no power. Discovering there was another robot, though, had made me first wonder about her. No one else at the dome could have been young enough for a plug implant. By the time a person is more than five years old, the spine and nervous system have grown too much to make the biological implant work.
“How?” I asked her.
She knew what I meant.
“Dr. Jordan.” She stopped, then started again. “I mean, my father. He designed the program. It was no problem for him to access the mainframe computer and plug me into it during the times you were scheduled for flight-simulation combat operations.”
“Why? Why keep it a secret?”
“I wish I could tell you why I'm here,” Ashley said, “but I can't.”
That wasn't the question I was asking. But since she took it that way, I continued. “Why are you practicing in a second-generation robot? Why is it such a secret? Who is forcing you to keep it a secret? We could have been working together every day.”
That's what hurt the worst. She'd been here a couple of months. We'd become friends. Great friends. All along she'd let me talk about my robot. When we'd first met, I'd been in the robot body, and she'd pretended not to know how it worked. I wondered how much else of our friendship was a lie.
Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I can't answer any of those questions.” She let out another breath.
“Can't? Or won't?”
Ashley hesitated a long time. “Won't.”