Oxygen Level Zero Mission 2

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “Cool,” she said. She flipped back her hair, revealing her silver cross earrings. “I respect someone who’s not afraid to ask questions about God and Jesus. There’s so much to figure out,” she said. “What I’ve found is that when you think about this universe as being created instead of just happening by accident, you start to see God everywhere, in all these amazing things. Wait until you get into Einstein’s theory of relativity. Energy turning into matter.

  Matter turning into energy. Wow! What really messes with my mind is the relationship between time and the speed of light. Think about it. At the speed of light, time slows down to a stop. If you could ride a light beam across the universe, a billion, billion, billion, billion miles later, not one second of time would have passed for you, even though hundreds of years would have passed

  by on Earth. It makes me think that if God doesn’t exist in the same sense we do in our bodies, it’s only natural that he would be outside of space and time as we know it.”

  She laughed at my expression. “You can shut your jaw now.

  Your mouth is open so wide you could catch flies, if Mars had flies. What, you don’t think a girl should know about stuff like that?”

  I lifted my hand and pushed my jaw shut.

  It made her laugh again.

  “It’s not that you’re a girl,” I said. “I mean, my mom’s a scientist. It’s just that I never expected the one person my age in this dome to turn out to be someone who loves science too.”

  “How could I not?” she answered. “Considering the family I was born into.”

  “What kind of family?”

  She answered my question with a question. “What do you do for fun around here?”

  If she didn’t want to talk about her family, I wasn’t going to push it.

  “For fun?” I shrugged. “Dance lessons. Try out for Olympic sprinting competitions. Things like that.”

  “But you’re in a . . .” She hit her forehead with the heel of her palm. “Sorry. You were joking, weren’t you?”

  Another shrug. “Bad habit,” I said.

  “Don’t get me started on my bad habits. Let me tell you, six months crossing the solar system with no music or friends . . . well, halfway here I nearly asked for them to drop me off without a space suit.”

  “Um,” I began, intensely curious but not wanting to pry,

  “exactly what are you doing here?”

  “My father is a quantum physicist. That’s why I know so much about relativity and stuff like that. He’s setting up some research that’s a lot easier here than on Earth because of the lower gravity.

  He’s so good that when he told the United Nations’ science agency he wouldn’t go unless he could take me, they said it would be all right, since I was the only kid in our family.”

  Just like me. An only kid. And a science freak. Wow!

  “What about your mother?”

  Ashley stiffened, as rigid as a statue.

  Dumb, I told myself. I’d just asked about her family again.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said quietly, her eyes turned downward. “I’d have asked the same question. They got divorced about a year ago. It was just pretty messy, that’s all. I think Dad wanted to be sent out here to get away from her.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said—and meant it. I knew what having an

  absent parent was all about.

  “Me too,” she said sadly. Then she smiled, but it seemed forced. “You want to help me with something?” she asked.

  “Probably,” I said. With every passing minute, it was getting easier to be around her. I felt less shy.

  “Help me find this robot,” she said. “I met him earlier and . . .”

  “Him?”

  “His name was Bruce. He’s kind of a smarty-pants, but it’s cute.”

  “Oh, Bruce. You met him already?”

  She nodded.

  “Smart robot,” I said, playing along. “Knows his math.”

  “I was impressed,” she said.

  “Wait until you catch his juggling act.”

  “Bruce the robot can juggle?” Her eyes widened like a little girl hearing about Santa Claus.

  “Sure,” I replied. “You’ll know he really likes you if he offers to show you.”

  “Cool.”

  “Why do you want to find him?” I asked.

  “He promised me a tour of the dome.”

  “He spends most of his nights plugged into the electrical grid,”

  I said. I wasn’t going to mention that this night he was lying in the middle of the greenhouse, destroyed by aliens.

  “Oh. I know he’s just a robot. But that sounds lonely.”

  “He’ll be all right. He—“

  I pictured the robot. Stuck in the middle of the bamboo-corn.

  At the edge of a small gully. A gully made by water from the nozzles of the greenhouse sprinklers. Which meant the robot was directly beneath . . .

  “He what?” she asked.

  I thought of the last things I’d heard and felt in the robot body.

  Click. Hiss. Then something cold against the body.

  “Got to go,” I said and started wheeling quickly away from her toward the ramp. “Good-bye.”

  “But . . . ,” she began to protest.

  I didn’t hear the rest of it. By then I was already whizzing down the ramp to find Rawling.

  &+$37(5

  I couldn’t sleep after talking with Rawling about my theory. I kept thinking about what I’d be doing the next morning. So in the quiet of the night I worked on my diary.

  I realized even if no one on Earth ever read it, I’d at least have it for myself. Years and years down the road, as an old man, I could reread all this and remember what it was like growing up on Mars.

  Keeping that in mind, I pretended I was writing a letter to myself in the future. That made it fun as I finished explaining in my diary what had made me leave Ashley so quickly.

  Aliens hadn’t stalled the robot body.

  It was water.

  At least, that was my theory.

  When Ashley asked me about Bruce—a dumb name,

  but it stuck—and when I thought about the robot

  beneath the water nozzles, the last sounds and

  sensations made sense.

  Click. That was the automatic timer.

  Hiss. That was the beginning of the water spray.

  And the cold sensation? Water, of course.

  My robot body had been standing at the gully

  where the water came down and collected. Water,

  then, had showered my titanium shell.

  It was so obvious that after I rushed to find

  Rawling and tell him my theory, he groaned.

  Rawling searched the computer records to find

  out exactly when I left the robot body and went

  into the thrashing fit on the bed. That time

  matched exactly when the automatic sprinklers in

  the greenhouse began to spray water. Which was not

  good for Bruce the robot body.

  On Mars, it never rains. Water is a precious

  resource. The dome was established near the south,

  where we can get water from the polar ice cap.

  Because water is so scarce, no one bothered to wonder what would happen to the robot body if it

  got wet.

  So what would happen to a robot body suddenly

  soaked in water?

  An electrical short circuit. At least, if my

  theory is right.

  In the morning, Rawling is going to try to hook

  me up to the robot body again. Then we’ll find out

  more about the aliens.

  It will only work, of course, if the robot body

  is still fine and we can get there before the

  automatic sprinklers turn on again.

  But we won’t find out until morning. And if it


  is fine . . .

  “Tyce?”

  It was my father’s voice.

  He knocked on the door.

  “Yes,” I called.

  He pushed open the door. It was dim inside my room, with only the computer monitor giving light.

  “Up late, aren’t you?” He was framed in the doorway with light behind him, so I couldn’t see the expression on his face.

  “I’m not a kid,” I said quickly. “Mom doesn’t tell me when to go to bed anymore.”

  “Hang on,” he said. “You don’t need to get so defensive. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. It was just a comment.”

  “In that case,” I said, “you’re right. I am up late.”

  “I don’t appreciate your tone of voice.”

  Well, I thought , I don’t appreciate someone who shows up every three years and tells me what to do. But I didn’t say it.

  I saved my file and clicked off my computer instead. When the monitor light dimmed, only the light from the common living area lit the room.

  “Good night,” I said. “I’m tired.”

  “Good night? But you were just—“

  “I finished my computer work. I’ve got to get up early

  tomorrow,” I stated flatly as I wheeled to my bed.

  “Tyce, I don’t understand why you act like this. I’m only trying to talk with you—“

  I cut my father’s words off. “Really,” I said, “I’m very tired.”

  I heard him expel a breath. Then he left the room and shut the door without another word.

  It left me in complete darkness.

  For some stupid reason, I felt like crying.

  &+$37(5

  “Yesterday when you were out, I ran diagnostics through the remote and couldn’t get a reading,” Rawling said. His hair had rooster points, sticking up as if he hadn’t had time to comb it yet. “But this morning everything checked out fine. If your theory about water is right, that would explain it.”

  We were back in the computer lab. I’d escaped the mini-dome without a lecture from Mom about how my father was doing his best and that he and I should try to get along.

  I nodded in agreement with Rawling. “Whatever water leaked inside would have dried up after you ran the first diagnostics.”

  Rawling checked his watch. “The next automatic watering

  takes place in just under an hour. I want the robot out of the greenhouse before then. Even if you’re not directly beneath a nozzle this time, you’ll still get some of the spray.”

  Rawling lifted my legs onto the bed for me. He began to strap me down.

  “Everything checks out fine with the robot. Still, I wish we could bring it in for a visual inspection. Any other circumstances but this . . .”

  Again, I nodded. I felt sorry for Rawling. As new director, this alien issue must be stressful. He was hours away from the deadline he’d set for himself to tell everybody under the dome about the aliens. If all he could tell them was what little we knew, it would raise the level of fear so high that his announcement could well do more harm than good. We definitely needed to find out more about those aliens.

  “Rawling?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve got to ask. I’ve been trying to figure it out myself, and I can’t get anywhere with it.”

  “Ask.”

  “You and Mom have been encouraging me to read some of the Bible.” I paused, remembering how Ashley said she thought it was

  cool to search for the truth about God and Jesus. I echoed her. “It’s been cool, learning about Jesus and thinking of him walking around on Earth and helping people and telling them about God.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, what if there are aliens? So far, we don’t have any proof, except for what I might have seen, but that could be a water short circuit messing up the robot computer, or maybe me trying to imagine too hard I was seeing something. But what if there are aliens? Then how does God fit into this and all the stuff he promised through Jesus? Does God love aliens too?”

  “Why don’t you ask me the square root of 5,237,676?”

  Rawling fired back.

  “Huh?”

  He smiled. “Well, that wouldn’t be much tougher of a question than your first one.” He thought for a moment. “I’m not sure I can give you a good answer, Tyce. On one hand, it’s God’s universe and who are we to say what he can or cannot do in it? On the other hand, as humans, we naturally want to feel he loves only us in a special way. You have a special relationship with your mom, but does that mean that only she’s allowed to love you?”

  Ouch. So Rawling had noticed how I felt about my father. At least Rawling was being honest with me.

  “Does that help?” he asked.

  “No.” I grinned.

  He grinned too. “Never be afraid to ask questions about God.

  Even if it doesn’t look like you’ll get the answers right away. God is big enough to handle anything you might ask.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Ready for the blindfold?”

  “Ready.”

  “Remember,” he said as he put the blindfold over my head. “If anything feels or looks strange once you get in there, give the stop command and return here. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I said.

  Rawling ran through our checklist.

  When we’d reviewed everything to his satisfaction, he put the soundproof headset over my ears.

  In the darkness and silence of waiting, I was nervous. If my theory was wrong . . .

  I told myself that fear wasn’t going to help me.

  And as that thought ended, once again I began to fall off a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.

  I kept falling and falling and falling. . . .

  &+$37(5

  I stopped falling and opened my eyes among the stalks of bamboo-corn in the greenhouse. Light filtered into my front video lens.

  Mentally, I blinked. The robot, of course, had no need to blink the way I did in my human body, but it felt natural and brought the green of the bamboo-corn into focus.

  I turned the video lens upward and brought the ceiling of the greenhouse into focus.

  I’d been right.

  Directly above me was a sprinkler nozzle. It would have

  completely flooded my robot body with water.

  As Rawling had instructed me, I began a checklist of the other robot senses.

  Sight, of course, was operational. I went to hearing next.

  Without moving, I strained for any unusual sounds.

  What reached me was the distant sigh of wind moving through small rips in the plastic fabric of the greenhouse tent. No scurrying of alien creatures.

  And something else. Something strange.

  I turned up my hearing volume.

  There it was. A slow and steady and very soft thump-thump-thump-thump.

  Like a heartbeat? Or heartbeats?

  Sight and sound worked fine. Maybe too fine. The heartbeats made me feel like I was in some kind of horror movie.

  “Hello?” I said.

  My voice worked fine too.

  My robot body couldn’t smell or taste. So I let my mind go to the last of the senses. Touch.

  I became aware of another sensation through my robot body.

  Weight. And warmth. In my right hand.

  The robot was so strong that I hadn’t noticed the weight at first.

  To my senses, it was like a human wearing a watch on his wrist.

  Almost no weight at all.

  But there was definitely weight, and definitely warmth, hitting the sensors imbedded in the titanium of my three fingers.

  I slowly turned my front video lens downward. At the same time, I lifted my right hand upward.

  At first all I saw was a blurry darkness. From looking upward at the ceiling, my focus had been set on a distance farther away.

  Like an automatic camera, the lens zoomed in to make an

 
adjustment.

  When I saw what I was holding, I finally realized where the sound came from, the thump-thump-thump that sounded like a heartbeat.

  It was a heartbeat—from the small Martian creature gripped securely in my titanium fingers.

  &+$37(5

  I shouted Stop! in my mind.

  Instantly I was back in my body. My human body. On the bed in the computer lab.

  “Rawling,” I said as calmly as I could.

  I didn’t hear his reply, of course, not with the soundproof headset over my ears.

  Seconds later, he took off my blindfold and removed the

  headset.

  “You all right?” His face was worried. He quickly began to unstrap me from the bed.

  “I’m all right,” I answered. “And don’t unstrap me. I want to go back. I just needed to ask you something. Not via robot. But person to person.”

  It felt strange, staring straight up at the ceiling while I talked.

  “Ask away.”

  “Well,” I said. This was going to be fun. Which is why I wanted to ask my question in person. “What do you want me to do with the alien I captured?”

  “What!” Rawling shouted in my ear.

  “Alien,” I repeated. “I’ve got it in my hand. My robot hand.

  You want me to let it go? Or bring it into the dome?”

  “Alien! What’s it look like? How’d you capture it so quickly?

  Is it alive? Dead? Talk to me!” Rawling said excitedly.

  I was right. This was fun.

  “Remember I told you all these dark objects were jumping toward me as I blacked out in the greenhouse?”

  He nodded.

  “I’d brought my hands up to protect myself,” I said. “One of them must have jumped into my hand. As the robot lost power, the fingers locked into place. The poor thing must have been stuck in the robot hand for nearly twenty-four hours.”

  “Poor thing?”

  “Rawling, it’s almost cute.” I stopped myself. “Correction. It is cute.”

  I tried to think of a way to explain it. I had to rely on photos I’d seen in the CD-ROM encyclopedia.

  “It looks like a mixture between a koala bear and a small puppy dog. It has thick dark hair, a mixture of brown and black. Not much for a nose. Big paws. Big eyes, two of them. Four legs. Two ears that hang down. A mouth, of course.”