Final Battle (18 page)
Authors: Sigmund Brouwer
“Tyce?”
“Mom!”
Boy, did she look good. Her thick, dark hair was still cut short, like an upside-down bowl, but this time she'd carefully styled it. For the first time I saw a streak of gray.
Lying on my back on the floor of the platform buggy, I grinned at her, despite how dumb I felt.
Although she was smiling, her eyes were searching me.
It had taken at least a half hour for Ashley and Dad to get me in a space suit so I could be transported from the shuttle to the platform buggy. Once inside the safety of the minidome of the platform buggy, I'd removed my space helmet.
“Tyce!” Mom exclaimed again. Seeing me in a body cast was no surprise to her, I could tell. We'd been able to send e-mails back and forth the whole time I was in space. She leaned down quickly, then hesitated.
I guessed what she was thinking. That maybe after three years I was too grown-up to be affectionate. Especially in front of the other kids in the platform buggy.
“Mom! Don't I get a hug?” I said enthusiastically.
Her lips curved in a big grin and she hugged me as best as she could. Even though I was in a body cast wrapped in a space suit, that hug felt great.
When she let go of me, there was a single, shiny trail of a tear on her cheek. “I'm glad you're home,” she said.
“Me too.”
Mom stood and hugged Dad, then kept holding on to his hand. This time seeing their embrace didn't bug me, as it had earlier times when Dad had come home to Mars. It was good to see them together again.
My homecoming on Mars would have been perfect. I saw Flip and Flop, the two Martian koalas I'd rescued from death. It was great being in my own bed. The other kids had settled into their temporary quarters. And it felt very right being with both Mom and Dad again.
Yes, my homecoming would have been totally perfect.
Except for an emergency air leak the next morning that threatened to kill everyone under the dome.
Just after breakfast, I was in a wheelchair in Rawling's office. It had been great to see his smiling face as soon as I was carried into the dome.
Already I missed zero gravity. The seat back of the wheelchair had been tilted so my body could recline. Before, when I was in a regular wheelchair without a body cast, at least I could wheel myself around the dome. Now, lying close to horizontal with the cast holding my body rigid, I was totally dependent on other people to move me.
Which was why I was in Rawling's office, where the walls still displayed framed paintings of Earth scenes like sunsets and mountains. I knew Rawling hated the paintings because of what they stood forâthat the previous director, Blaine Steven, had used valuable and expensive cargo space to bring such things to Mars for his office. And because of his role in almost killing 180 people under the dome during the oxygen crisis, Steven was still in a World United Federation prison on Earth. But he didn't seem to mind. At least he was safe from the Terrataker rebels who had threatened to kill him.
So why were the paintings still there? I grinned. It was typical of Rawling to take his responsibilities so seriously that he didn't even take the time to remove the paintings. After all, he was the current director of the Mars Project and also one of only two medical doctors under the dome.
“How long?” I askedâfor the 12th time in the last few minutes. Rawling had just passed an X-ray wand over me. On the floor was the lead shield that he'd wrapped around the parts of my body that weren't being X-rayed.
“Just waiting for the film to print out. I'll compare it to the doctor's notes that were e-mailed from Earth. Then, finally, I'll be able to give you an answer. I refuse to guess until then.”
For me, Rawling was a mixture of older brotherâin his late 40s, much older!âbuddy, teacher, and doctor. Rawling had worked with me for hours every day ever since I was eight years old, training me in a virtual-reality program to control a robot body as if it were my own. His short, dark hair was even more streaked with gray than I remembered. His nose still looked like it had been broken once, which it had. When he was younger he'd been a quarterback at his university back on Earth, and his wide shoulders showed it.
“I think it's finished printing,” I said rather impatiently.
“Old age has made you cranky, huh?” he replied wryly.
He still had the same dry sense of humor I remembered. Although 17 was a lot older than when I'd last seen him, it didn't seem like three years had passed. It felt so good to be around him again.
“No, this body cast.” I was already feeling itchy, and it wasn't even close to time for the body powder.
Rawling leisurely got out of his chair, grinning because he knew I was impatient. He read the X-ray film, then looked up at me.
“Well?” I said.
“Well, what?” he threw back.
“Lost your eyesight since I was last here?” I knew him well enough to tease him. “Need bifocals?”
“Ouch, not even funny,” he said. “Because it's true.” He laughed, then scanned the medical charts from Earth again. “Your dad must be exhausted. How many shuttle trips are he and the other pilots making?”
“Quit stalling.” I knew Rawling already knew. Each shuttle trip took two hours. Dad had to make one shuttle trip for each spaceship but could do only five trips per day. Ours was the only one that had been unloaded last night, since it was so late in the evening. Today some of the passenger spaceships would be unloaded. For the passengers in the other spaceships, one extra day in space wouldn't seem too long, not after the length of the trip. After that, Dad would bring down the equipment and supplies from the unmanned ships. And then the major work would begin. Assembling the carbon-dioxide generators. In the meantime, the other kids were getting a tour of the dome and settling into their new home.
“Stalling?” Rawling asked as innocently as possible. “You accuse
me
of stalling?”
“When can I get the body cast off?”
He smiled and read the X-rays one more time. I tried to grab them from him, but he was just out of reach. My arms flailed.
“You can feel your leg and wiggle your toes, right? That's good news.”
I groaned. “Come on, Rawling. I already showed you. It's no fun in this body cast. When can we get rid of it?”
Suddenly serious, he scratched his chin. “The X-rays show something strange here. At the bottom of your spine. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was an implanted pacemaker. Except smaller.”
“I know what it is. It sends out small electrical impulses that are supposed to help the nerves splice better.”
“I don't see mention of it on the charts.”
“Well,” I said, “that's what one of the doctors told me. All I care about anyway is getting this cast off. When!”
He grinned again. “Tomorrow.”
“All right!” I said.
And that's when the dome horns began to scream.
We both knew what it meant. The horns blew for only one reason.
“Oxygen alert!” he shouted above the horns. “Got to go!”
He did.
Seconds later he reappeared with a mask and oxygen tube. He strapped the mask over my face. “If you can't breathe, all you need to do is twist the top of the tube to release the oxygen!”
All across the dome everyone else was doing the same thing. It had been drilled into us again and again. It was the first thing new arrivals learned. When the horns signal an oxygen emergency, go for an oxygen tube. There were at least two in every living area. And dozens and dozens of others scattered across the dome. It meant that anybody at anytime could reach one within 10 seconds of hearing the sirens. Each tube had enough oxygen to last 30 minutes.
“Get one for you too!” I yelled at Rawling. Not that he was likely to forget.
He nodded. “Got to go!”
With that, he was gone.
Ashley rescued me.
Not that I was dying, but it was very frustrating to be stuck in Rawling's office in a body cast in a wheelchair with loud horns vibrating your head and an oxygen mask on your face.
She ran in, her black hair flying around the edges of her own mask. “Rawling said you'd be here!” The only way to communicate was by shouting from beneath the mask. “You all right?”
I nodded. “What's happening?”
“Something punctured the dome!”
“Big hole?”
“The size of a baseball. You should have seen the stuff getting sucked through the hole!”
I could imagine it. The dome was made of a thick, black glass and was powered by huge solar panels hung right below the roof. The dome was pressurized, of course, so air would have escaped through that hole with hurricane force.
“Can you take me out there?” I yelled.
“What?” Ashley exclaimed above the horns.
“Can youâ?” I stopped shouting. The horns had finally quit. Someone must have been able to put an emergency patch over the hole. Suction from the outer atmosphere would keep it in place while it was permanently repaired.
I smiled weakly as we both removed our masks. “Can you take me out there?”
“Sure,” she said. “But how about you leave this body of yours behind for now.”
I knew exactly what she meant. I looked at my watch. “Good idea. We've got time.”
“Time before what?”
I didn't answer. My next headache was scheduled to arrive in exactly an hour.
“I'll explain when I can,” I promised. “Trust me, all right?”
After wheeling me to the computer room, Ashley hooked me to the X-ray transmitter that would put me in contact with my robot, which had already been unloaded and was parked at the far end of the dome.
Ashley ran me through the checklist.
“Check, check, and check,” I said. “I'm ready for the helmet.”
She lowered it on my head, then snapped the visor in place.
My world instantly became black. The only sound was the faint
whoosh, whoosh
of my heartbeat.
In the darkness I gave a thumbs-up, knowing Ashley was waiting for the signal that I was ready.
I waited too. For a familiar sensation, as if I were falling, falling, falling off an invisible cliff into total blackness.
The sensation came.
And I fell, fell, fell⦠.
At the entrance to the dome, light entered the video lenses of my robot where it was parked. Through the robot, I saw movement everywhere just inside the entrance of the dome. The emergency patch had stopped most of the immediate air loss, but repair crews now had to go outside. Nearby, 10 men and women geared up in space suits carried various pieces of equipment as the inner door of the entrance slid open.
If you can picture an igloo large enough to fit 10 people, with that short, rounded tunnel sticking out in front, you'll have a good idea of what the entrance to the dome looks like.
In our case, there are two large sealed doors to the tunnel. The outer door leads to the surface of the planet. The inner door leads to the inside of the dome. Between those doors is a gap about twice the length of a platform buggy, where one of them was parked.
As I watched, all 10 crew members climbed the ladder and entered the minidome of the platform buggy. The inner door closed and sealed the dome again.
The outer door opened. Instantly the warm, moist, oxygen-filled air from the tunnel turned into white, ghostly vapor and escaped into the cold Martian atmosphere. There was no danger to the rest of the dome, of course, because the inner door was still sealed to keep the dome's air from escaping.
The platform buggy rolled out onto the surface of the planet.
As the outer door began to shut again, another crew member, who had already been outside, stepped into the tunnel chamber. He moved slowly because his bulky space suit made him clumsy. When the outer door sealed shut, he hit a button to open the inner door. A brief puff of vapor showed where Martian air was absorbed into the dome air.
I guessed this crew member had been the first one out there to survey the situation.
I was curious to know what could have penetrated the dome and caused the leak. So I commanded the robot to roll forward.
The man kept walking away, so I sped up to get his attention. It didn't take much extra speed. His space suit slowed him down considerably.
He didn't see me so I tapped him on the shoulder with the titanium robot fingers. The crew member tilted his face toward me. I didn't see it. Space-suit helmets have extremely dark visors.
“Hello,” I said. “I am Tyce Sanders. What happened out there?”
The man stopped walking immediately. Now that I had his attention, I waited for him to pull off his helmet. After all, he was in the dome now. He didn't have to worry about the Martian atmosphere.
Instead, he did something strange. Still wearing his space suit, he wriggled his right arm free. The empty sleeve of his space suit hung at his side, but his right arm remained against his body inside the space suit, as if he were searching desperately for something.
“Hello,” I repeated more slowly, just in case he hadn't understood me the first time. “What happened out there?”
I never got an answer.
The man looked at me and then pressed something inside his suit.
Instantly it seemed like a baseball bat had slammed against the side of my head. Not the robot's head. But my head. Where I was lying in my body cast in the computer room.
I screamed at the incredible pain but didn't hear anything because my helmet blocked all sound.
I screamed and screamed until, mercifully, the pain inside my brain must have knocked me totally unconscious.
“Here's what's strange about the hole in the dome,” Dad said the next morning.
The pain from my headache had been so intense that I hadn't even woken up until afternoon the day before. And then I'd had to just lie there and rest, until Mom and Dad came to get me.