Double Cross (6 page)
Blaine Steven's voice became less harsh. “You're a good man, McTigre. I know you wouldn't be out there without good reason. I will review the logbook. In the meantime, continue with your mission unless you receive a direct order from me to return. I am in control now and will not permit unauthorized field trips. Understood?”
Rawling's jaw clenched with anger. “Understood.”
“And I want reports every six hours. Understood?” Steven demanded.
“Understood.”
“Good-bye.” Blaine Steven clicked off without even waiting for Rawling to say good-bye.
Rawling hung up the radio microphone. “This doesn't make sense,” he said, lifting his eyes first to Dad's, then to mine. “No sense at all.”
I stood at the edge of the crater in the robot body. Below were boulders and rocks, darker red than most Martian rocks because they'd been so recently exposed to the surface by the explosion that had caused the crater.
About 12 miles away, a mountain range filled my view, almost bright red with late afternoon sun. The temperature was warm for Mars, about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and just a little windy.
Behind me, towering above Bruce's titanium shell, was the platform buggy. It threw long shadows across the robot body and into the crater. We'd traveled most of the rest of the day because repairing the tire had delayed our arrival here. Now the sun was only two hours away from setting.
To begin, Rawling had given me a simple assignment. All he needed was a quick survey. With night coming so soon, he didn't think we'd be able to get much else done.
A thin metal cable was attached to the frame of the platform buggy. This cable dangled over the edge of the crater and all the way to the bottom. Just like in my earlier practice run of cliff climbing when I was carrying the crash-test dummy, I held grippers in each hand, ready to clamp the wire as I let myself down to the bottom of the crater.
Five large black boxes were centered down there among the boulders and rocks.
Had an ancient Martian civilization left them behind? Had aliens from outside the solar system hidden them there? What was inside those mysterious boxes?
It was my job to find out.
Slowly I climbed down the cable hand by hand. The wheels of my robot body moved easily, and the entire descent went without any trouble.
Ten minutes later I was on the floor of the crater. It was almost like being in a maze. The boulders were large enough that I couldn't see over the tops of them. In many places, they were so close together that I couldn't roll between them. I was forced to backtrack and look for other ways around them.
It had been easy enough to see the large black boxes from above. They formed the center of a large ring of the boulders, as if the explosion had left them there and thrown the rocks and boulders outward. So seeing the center of the crater from above had been easy.
Down here, though, with the rough, rust-colored rock of the boulders blocking my view in every direction, it was more difficult.
It took 10 more minutes of wandering around the huge boulders before I finally arrived at the opening of the center of the crater.
I got my first close look at the black boxes. Was it the first time a human had seen them?
As I rolled the robot body toward them, I was confident Dad and Rawling were seeing them too through the video lenses that served as the robot's eyes. They recorded everything on a monitor that Dad and Rawling could watch as I moved around.
They, however, could
only
watch.
I could do much more. Like get so close that the huge black boxes surrounded me like a prison wall. Close up, the black of the sides of the boxes was dull. Not dull like weathered paint but a black that seemed to soak up light.
I tapped the side of the nearest box. I don't know what I was expecting. To hear if it was hollow, maybe.
I did not, however, expect the box to start moving.
Which it did. If the robot body had had a heart, it would have stopped in shock. Because silently the box seemed to split at the corner nearest me. And slowly, very slowly, the sides of the box began to separate.
I scooted backward, letting my video lens roam up and down as the split in the box grew wider and wider.
Down here the crater was filled with shadows because of the angle of the sun. It was difficult to see inside the black box as it opened.
I was ready for anything.
Would an alien charge out at me, awakened from hundreds or thousands of centuries of hibernation?
Would a preprogrammed robot appear with instructions?
Had I triggered a 3-D hologram to speak to me?
Would there be something so totally beyond human culture that I wouldn't be able to understand what I was seeing?
The sides continued to open. Still I saw nothing but blackness in the interior of the box.
I wasn't worried about my own safety. I was in the robot body. All I had to do was shout
Stop!
in my mind, and I'd instantly disengage from controlling the robot. If anything harmed the robot body, which would be difficult to do anyway, my brain and my own body would still be safe in the platform buggy.
Finally, the box stopped all movement.
I waited.
Nothing happened.
I rolled closer again. Cautiously.
Nothing happened.
Still closer.
The inside of the box seemed to soak up all light. In the shadows of the crater, it was like looking into an infinitely deep cave.
Still closer. I stopped about 20 feet from the open black box.
Then I saw it, floating in the air. In the exact center of the box. It was a round object the size of a human head.
I knew what Rawling would want me to do at this point: zoom in closer with my video lens and record the object for him and Dad to examine on the monitor. I focused closer and opened the video lens as wide as possible to capture as much light as it could.
That's when I saw the object was not a head. It was more like a gyroscope globeâa wheel or disk that spins rapidly around an axisâand made of thin, curved, shiny tubing. It rotated slowly. But the weirdest part was that it just hung there, in the center of the box, like it was defying gravity.
That's all I could see inside this huge black box.
I had my instructions from Rawling. “Just observe and record,” he'd said firmly. “Disengage at the first sign of danger. Let the video lenses do the work. Do not interfere with anything.”
I had to know, however. Was that rotating globe hanging from something?
I wondered about waiting until I'd discussed it with Rawling. But what if the black box closed? What if exposure to the Martian atmosphere damaged it?
I decided to get as close as possible. I rolled forward until I was almost at the black box.
The gleaming globe hung there, like a silent eye staring back at me. I saw that it rotated from left to right, then up and down, then right to left, then down and up.
How could it rotate in so many different directions if it was hanging from something like a black wire hidden in the darkness of the box? But if nothing was holding it, how could it hang there against the force of gravity?
I wasn't going to touch the globe. No, I had Rawling's instructions. All I wanted to do was pass the titanium hand of the robot body over the top of the suspended globe. I wanted to see if somehow something was holding it in place.
So I carefully reached into the box.
And my entire world exploded.
I woke to darkness.
Not the darkness of the blindfold that covered my own eyes. But the darkness of the Martian night, with the pinpoints of lightâthe starsâcoming through the clear plastic of the platform buggy's minidome.
“Hello?” I croaked. “Hello?”
I heard the sound of footsteps as Rawling and Dad both rushed toward me.
“Tyce!” Dad said. I heard the worry in his voice.
“Tyce!” Rawling said a millisecond later.
The loudness of both their voices struck like a sledgehammer to the side of my head. “Whisper,” I pleaded. “Just whisper.”
A tiny light appeared in Rawling's hand. “I want to check your pupils.” He beamed the light in my eye. “Better. Much better.”
“It was worse?” I asked as I lay on the bed with Dad and Rawling now beside me.
“Somehow a massive electrical current short-circuited the robot computer drive. For you, it was the equivalent of running your head into a wall.”
“Felt like it,” I said, groaning.
“How's everything else?” Rawling asked. “Fingers, hands, arms. Start moving.”
I sat up carefully. “Oh no!”
“What?” Dad asked. “What is it?”
“My legs! I can't move them!” I stopped, pausing dramatically. “Forgot. I couldn't move them before either.”
“Very funny,” Dad growled. “Very, very funny.”
I thought it was. I mean, if I couldn't joke about being in a wheelchair, then it meant I was feeling too sorry for myself. I'd learned to accept it a long time ago.
Dad helped me into my wheelchair.
Rawling had moved to the platform buggy controls. He turned up the interior lights. “Let's talk,” he said, pulling up a chair beside me.
Dad did the same so that we formed a small semicircle.
“We have everything on video until you reached inside,” Rawling continued. “Then the short-circuit cut everything out. I thought you'd promised not to touch or interfere with anything you saw.”
I nodded. I explained that all I'd wanted to do was see if the thing was floating. I hadn't intended to touch anything at all.
“Maybe there was some kind of protective force field,” I said.
“Maybe,” Rawling said. “But we won't find out until tomorrow. Your dad's going to go down there in a protective suit and pull the robot body away from the black boxes. Hopefully all he'll need to do is replace a circuit breaker in the computer hard drive and Bruce will be ready again. But we can't have you knocking yourself out. No damage was done this time, but next time ⦔ He didn't need to finish his statement.
“What do you think that globe was?” I asked. We were still speaking in low voices. Not only was it easier on my headache, but it seemed to fit. After all, we were 200 miles away from the main dome, sheltered from the Martian night only by a thin layer of plastic that held in the warmth and oxygen we needed to live. We were alone and isolated in the dark, only a stone's throw from a mysterious set of objects that might have been left in the crater by aliens.
“We've reviewed the videos again and again,” Dad said. “We're afraid to let ourselves believe what we think it is. Rawling doesn't want to send a satellite feed of the video to the main dome yet, even though Blaine Steven has gone from asking for reports every six hours to calling us every hour. Because if it's what we think it is ⦔
Rawling let out a deep breath. “You see, Tyce, we have no idea how long those black boxes have been buried. No idea how long that globe has been spinning and spinning. For all we know, it's been there for thousands of years, waiting for someone to discover it.”
“Have you heard of a perpetual motion machine?” Dad asked me.
“I've heard about people trying to find a way to make one,” I said. “It's a machine that never loses energy. It'll stay in motion forever.”
“Right,” he said. “Inventors on Earth have been trying to come up with one for centuries. Tell me, why is it impossible to make one?”
“Easy,” I said. “Friction. No matter how efficient a machine is, it will lose energy as it fights friction. The moving parts inside cause friction. Air outside causes friction. Contact with the ground will cause friction.”
“What if the machine has some force that actually allows it to act against gravity?” Dad asked. “Then what?”
“Antigravity. That's as impossible as perpetual motion.”
Neither replied.
“No way,” I said. “You think this thing has both? Antigravity
and
some energy source to allow perpetual motion?”
“How else can you explain it?” Rawling said, scratching his head in thought. “We've run the video in slow motion and reviewed it dozens of times. This
thing
has no apparent source of power and nothing to hold it in place. Yet we can't guess how long it's been spinning against gravity.”
“Wow,” I said. “It must be alien.”
“That fact alone would be staggering beyond belief,” Dad said. “But if somehow humankind could understand how to make an antigravity force, it would change our history forever. We could put buildings together that don't need support. Transporting goods would be cheap. People might travel in the air as easily as walking across a street. Add on top of that a way to keep a machine in motion without losing energy and ⦔
Rawling shook his head in awe. “If that's truly what it is, I don't think we can comprehend how much this means to the human race.”
“I don't think we can comprehend how much this means to the human race.”
As I tried to sleep, Rawling's words echoed again and again in my mind.
Antigravity? Without gravity holding them down, cars and trains would move with no more than the push of a fingertip. Airplanes would be weightless. It would change all types of transportation so fuel would barely be needed. And what if small antigravity devices were made so people could float?
Wow! If scientists could figure out what made that globe revolve, they might be able to apply the principle of perpetual motion to large motors. What would Earth be like without fights over energy?
The whole purpose of the Mars colony was to help the overpopulated world. It was expected to take 100 years or more. In that time, millions of people might die from starvation or war.
And now?