Rat Trap (2 page)

Bumpripbumpripbumprip.

The pulse of his finger over the brackets reminded him of rattling the iron railings in front of fancy apartments in the city, and before he knew it, Jeff was running—his favorite thing! He hardly noticed. It was easy for him to run on the space station. Everyone else thought walking was hard enough, because of the spin that created the artificial gravity. The spin played tricks on the inner ear. Ruined your balance …

“Jeffrey!” Mom's voice burst like a thunderclap.

He staggered. Came up hard against the wall like a hockey player slammed against the boards. The color-coded piping swirled. He grabbed a handhold.

Mom stood in the door of her lab in bright yellow pj's. She was short, thin, and looked as delicate as a canary. But Mom was sharp as a hawk.

“You—you—scared me.”

“Better me than the captain.” Mom grabbed him into a strong hug. “Oh, Jeff, isn't it wonderful? A shuttle! Home!”

Jeff nodded, his cheek slipping against the soft flannel. The crush of her hug felt wonderful.

“Look at you.” Mom held him at arms length. “You're puffing like an air compressor. Come get a drink and cool off.”

“Look at
you
!” Jeff countered. The dark circles under her eyes were black as smudges of soot. “Hurry up and save the world. You need a vacation.”

“Don't I know it.” Mom made a tiny space between thumb and forefinger. “I'm this close.”

Stepping into the lab was like walking into the heart of the sun. The walls and ceiling were covered with poster-sized sunspot images. The dark sunspots covered the sun's fiery surface with feathered patterns like frost ferns on a window. And each sunspot was unique, like a snowflake.

They were beautiful.

Jeff could see that now, thanks to Rat.

Before, Jeff saw only black holes sucking up his parents' attention. Now he had three posters in his own room. Rat loved to look at them. She had told him about how sunshine touched her once, by accident, in a scientist's office. Its glow and warmth set her on the path to freedom, a daring escape from the lab that landed her on the space station.

With a clatter, Mom moved a stack of dirty dishes out of the sink. She was messy, like Jeff. There were papers on the floor. Every flat surface was piled with printouts and reference books. You never cleaned up after Mom. She had a geographic memory and stored everything in her “drop file.”

A little like Rat, actually.

Mom handed him the water. “I happened to glance at your study log. Impressive. I was sure you'd goof off with Nanny on the blink.”

Jeff shrugged. What could he say? You can thank Rat for that?

“I really appreciate how independent you've been lately. I know it's hard for you. I hoped we'd have more time, but with the shuttle coming early …”

“I know, there's twice the work and half the time,” Jeff said, repeating Dad's favorite phrase. “Where is Dad, anyway?”

“Asleep.”

“You should be sleeping, too.”

“Can't,” Mom said. “The computer is making the final calculations now.”

Jeff looked at the supercomputer, a cube no bigger than he was. A few lights blinked on its brushed metal case. Dozens of cables trailed from the cubes to power sockets on the wall.

“You're just … watching it?”

“Someone's got to. They never found that rat's body. What if it's still out there? When I think how it nearly ruined my project before …”

“Mom!” She never did get the story straight. “The meteor damaged the thruster, not Rat.”

A slip! Lucky for Jeff, Mom was in project-protection mode and didn't notice.

“Whatever. It chewed that wire. It could still chew wires. And what has that man done?” Mom meant the captain. “I'll tell you. Nothing. He must be convinced that Nanny killed it. Better safe than sorry, I say. He should set some traps.”

Poor Mom. Worrying for nothing. She thought Jeff had saved the Project. But Rat was the real hero. Jeff wished he could tell Mom the truth. Then she'd be able to sleep. But he couldn't. He'd promised. Rat didn't trust anyone. Especially scientists.

“I gotta go get breakfast, Mom. Want some?”

Mom shook her head. Even before he turned to go, her eyes went back to watching the computer.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

PLAYTIME

Tap-tap-tap.

The first part of the special door knock.

Rat froze in mid-keystroke. Muscles tensed for a leap into the laundry drawer.

A skipped beat, then:
tap-a-tap-a-tap-tap.

It was the boy.

Food!

Rat pivoted away from the keyboard. Her front toes curled over the edge of the desk. Behind her, screened by her body, her tail flicked over a few command keys. The escape pod studies disappeared. They were replaced by the dietary habits of
Rattus norvegicus,
the common brown rat.

The boy held out two strips of bacon. Rat had barely taken two bites when the boy asked, “All done?” and hurried to get the spyvest and jetpak. He pushed the keyboard aside and spread the vest flat on the desk next to Rat. It had many useful pockets, just like the one the scientists had made for her. She'd lost that one escaping from the lab. Its pockets had been filled with tools perfectly shaped for Rat: lasers and drills and concentrated food pellets and code breakers and scramblers.

Rat hated to remember all that she had lost. The new pockets were mostly empty. The boy could find very few tools here that were rat-sized, so far just a flashlight and a screwdriver.

Rat straddled the spyvest, then rolled, wrapping the sleeve of cloth around her. She snugged its Velcro ties against her middle. Standing, Rat shook herself to settle the hairs beneath the vest.

The boy held the silvery metal bottle of compressed gas lightly on her back. Straps dangled from it like a saddle girth. Clever boy. He'd made the rocket part. Rat had made the spyvest and harness because he didn't like sewing. Rat's nimble toes did.

Rat loved her jetpak. She loved the snug feel of the harness that held it to her back. She loved the control valve that fit perfectly in her paw. She never went to the Zero-G room without her jetpak. It was too dangerous to be stuck floating in the center of the room in case someone showed up unexpectedly.

“Ready to go?” The boy held his hand toward her, palm out, inviting her to climb into it. What a good boy! He never just grabbed her, like a scientist would. From the very first, he had always asked before picking her up.

Rat climbed from his hand down into his jump suit and stretched across his stomach. He zipped up and headed for the elevator. Even though her broken hind leg was carefully positioned, the flexing cloth pinched it as he walked. And the boy was too clean. The lingering soap smell on his skin scrubbed at the delicate inside of Rat's sensitive nose. It made her a little grumpy.

Toughen up! Rat told herself. This is practice. Practice for sneaking onto the space shuttle.

As the elevator moved
in
from the outer ring toward the very center of the space station, the fake gravity weakened. The jump suit gradually ballooned. More room for Rat. Safer. Less chance anyone would notice a rat-shaped bulge across the boy's stomach. But not as safe as Rat alone in an air vent. Going where she wanted. When she wanted.

Rat missed scurrying in the air vents. She longed to hear the click of her toes on metal again!

Soon.

The torn skin had already healed. Inside the cast, the bone was healing, too, thanks to the boy. So much was better because of the boy. She was still trapped here, though. She still had not felt dirt between her toes. Or eaten corn in a field. Soon the time for games would be over.

Her toes flexed with excitement.

The boy flinched. Rat had hurt him with those toes. And tickled him.

“Stop that!” The boy giggled.

Rat heard the door to the Zero-G room open. She flexed her toes again.

“Hey!” The boy quickly unzipped the suit. “You're bad!”

Rat gave a powerful shove with her good hind leg.

“You're it,” she signed as she shot through mid-air into the vast, empty room. The walls were lined with hundreds of rebound panels of different sizes, shapes, and colors. You had to remember which one did what, or you could get a big surprise. Tag was quite a challenge in the Zero-G room, and not just for the one who was IT!

“No fair!” the boy called after her.

Rat tried to play fair to keep the boy happy, but fair was hard for her to understand. It belonged to the world of games. Maybe with her nestmates, a long time ago, she had played games for fun.

Air drag slowed Rat to a standstill near the center of the room. A mistake. She hadn't pushed off with enough force. Dumb. This might be play, but mistakes were always bad.

Rat gripped the control valve. A brief squeeze, and gas hissed from the metal bottle, puffing her toward a blue triangle. Rat bumped into it and stuck. Her emergency escape route was behind this panel: an air vent big enough for a rat with a clunky cast. Rat glanced at the boy. He was busy setting the alarm that would warn them if anyone came.

Good boy. Serious before play. Rat, too.

A flick of her toe sent her drifting behind the panel. She reached her front paw through the grate of the air vent. Two plastic clips on the inside edge held it shut. Rat plucked them off. She stowed them in a pocket of her spyvest. Even though the vent was hidden from view, Rat never left the grate open. The fix-it robots would notice a grate that was supposed to be closed. They might tell someone who might guess that Rat was still alive.

Everything on the space station had a function and was supposed to be shipshape. This was important, Rat knew. Because just beyond the metal walls was the black airlessness of space—deadly as the needle the scientists used on failures.

A good reason to keep vents closed.

A good reason never to chew wires.

With a tiny shove, the grate swung into the vent.
Click!
It stuck to the magnet she had glued to the wall. Rat peered into the dark duct and saw in her mind its length, the many curves and twists, the interconnections that led to a dozen, a hundred, a thousand more pathways. If anyone surprised them, this was her secret way out. It would be a long, slow journey, dragging the heavy cast all the way back to the boy's room.

Rat moved around to the front of the blue triangle. The boy finished adjusting the control panel, then tugged on the door handle to bring his feet into contact with an orange diamond accelerator panel. The rebound reaction threw him straight at her.

Rat casually drifted toward the green square next to the blue triangle.

When the boy was halfway across the room, she touched it lightly with a forepaw. The acute-angle reaction sent her sailing in a wall-hugging circle around the room. She flattened her ears against the rush of air.

The boy smacked a red square to go shooting off toward an end wall. He'd never catch her, going that way. But then he managed to get a toe on a yellow octagon. It pirouetted him into the same wall-hugging arc as Rat. He was closing fast.

Rat lashed a brown rectangle with her tail. The reaction peeled her out of danger in a widening spiral. The boy sailed to the other side of the room. Hit. Stuck.

Rat stuck, too. She smoothed a few ruffled lavender hairs on her shoulder.

“I don't understand,” he said, breathing hard. “I've practiced for
weeks.
You've had only a few days. But you know all the neatest panels. How come?”

“Because you do not study,” Rat signed, but he could not read her paw signals from so far away.

Rat was lucky. A map of the strange room existed in her head along with the map of the space station. She only had to travel a path once, to feel the effect of a rebound panel once, and it became part of her brain. But the boy needed to study.

Rat noticed his knees flex, readying for a spring.

She kicked off.

Stupid cast! It made her a fraction late. The boy got the angle. His grasping fingers reached toward her. Closer. She could see the pattern of his fingerprints. The hands of all the scientists who'd ever eached into her cage appeared in her mind. Hands in the gloves that stank of rubber. Hands with needles and probes …

She wrenched the jetpak control. Gas hissed. The boy missed.

“Cheater!” He was not watching where he was going.
Smack!
The rebound panel tossed him head over heels.

Rat fired the jetpak a few times. She hovered in the middle of the room while the boy bounced out of control around her.

The boy finally used his own jetpak to come to a stop near her. They floated nose to nose. The boy was annoyed. “Why do you
do
that? You play chess by the rules. Why not this game? Huh?”

She signed, “Hands.”

The boy glanced at his hand, puzzled. “But you let me touch you all the time now.”

“Not you,” Rat signed. “Scientists.”

“Oh, Rat, I'm sorry.”

Beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep.

The warning alarm.
Someone was coming!

Rat squeezed the jetpak control hard. A great belch of gas erupted. Her body jerked forward. The broken leg, with its heavy cast, was slower to accelerate. It lingered behind, stretching weak muscles backward.

A stab of pain. Rat lost her grip on the control and went flying in crazy zigzags. She yanked the useless leg in close to her body. The pain lessened. She could steer again. Without even needing to look, she aimed for the blue triangle. Twisting the control to maximum, she rocketed into the air vent.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

WHO's COMING?

Nanny!

Jeff squeezed the control valve on his jetpak. The burst of gas rocketed him away from the door. But then his brain caught up with his reflexes: It
couldn't
be Nanny. They'd seen the pieces and the dark eye just an hour ago.