by Zac Harrison
Back in the lab, John worked like he’d never worked before. The console ate up his raw materials and ejected custom-made components. They only took seconds to make, but it was still frustrating to even have to wait that long.
John fitted each new piece into place as soon it was delivered, feeding fresh scrap materials into a hopper on the side.
Attach the leg servos, screw the neck in place, bolt the head on, clamp the ear antennae on the sides... Super-Rover was looking a lot more like a dog now, but the clock on the desk-com was already reading 7.46 p.m., and he didn’t even have his weapons yet. Sitting up and barking wouldn’t be much use against the likes of IFI... or any other robot, if it came to that.
At least he had Super-Rover’s remote control handset ready. It was held together with molecular binding strips, but it ought to work.
Across the lab, Emmie was making frantic adjustments to Cammy’s electronic brain. The hovering skimmer’s cockpit was open, and its skin was pulsing with patterns that didn’t match the surroundings at all, but were still beautiful – rolling open skies, strange red-orange rocky landscapes: a digital waltz of computer-generated forms.
John had never seen a more stunning robot. Even if Emmie struggled with the technical side of things, she definitely had a talent for art and design.
His own Super-Rover looked a bit basic next to Cammy, like a mutt made of old tin cans. But John knew there was a lot of power under that metallic skin. He’d plugged it in there himself. Now if only the components would hurry up...
The clock now read 7.54 p.m. Super-Rover’s freshly made, razor-sharp tail clonked into the delivery tray. Working as quickly as he dared, but careful not to cut himself, John wrestled it into place.
Now Super-Rover only needed his teeth. John had sliced the old beronzium claw into bits with a high-beam laser cutter earlier, and now he tipped the whole lot into the hopper. As he waited for the teeth to arrive, he heard an ominous low hum. An Examiner came drifting into the room.
The sound always made John’s hair stand on end, thinking of the first time he had met them. It must be coming to collect the robots! John realized. He glanced around and saw that everyone else was finished. He was the last.
“Come on!” he whispered to the console. Nothing happened.
In a moment of frustration, he thumped it. Suddenly, like a fruit machine paying out, the console dropped freshly made metal dog’s teeth into the tray. Finally!
“You have one minute to finish assembling your robots,” the Examiner intoned. “Countdown begins.”
It’s OK. I can do this. Piece of cake. John began to fit the teeth into the sockets already set in Super-Rover’s jaw. The first clicked home. The second, he fumbled. It went spinning across the floor.
“Fifty seconds.”
John dived after it and managed to snatch it up. “Ouch. That’s sharp!”
“Forty seconds.”
He clicked it into place and grabbed for the rest. The tray came off in his hand, sending loose teeth rattling everywhere like puzzle pieces. John groaned in dismay.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Come on!” John told himself desperately, as he picked up the teeth and tried to cram them into place. “Don’t mess it up now!”
“Twenty seconds.”
I’m not going to make it, he just knew.
“Ten, nine, eight...”
Gaaah! Why did I design something so fiddly? John was sweating as he clicked the last row of teeth into place. His hair had fallen into his face, but he didn’t even have time to brush it away.
All done. But wait – no, there was a gap. A tooth was missing.
“Four, three, two...”
There it was on the floor, almost under the console. He grabbed it and shoved it in. Sharp metal dug into his finger, drawing blood.
“Ow!”
“...one. Bzzzzt. Time is now up. Step away from your robots. If you do not step away from your robots, they will be destroyed.”
John moved away from Super-Rover, sucking on his injured finger. “That was too close,” he gasped.
The Examiner came drifting over. A single glowing eye wafted back and forth across its digital faceplate.
It angled its head towards Super-Rover, and a blast of red light engulfed the little robot. Then it was completely gone.
Chapter 5
The Examiner moved on across the classroom. John felt as if the floor had given way under him.
“They destroyed him!” he blurted. “That’s not fair. I finished in time! I know I did!”
“John, John, it’s OK!” Emmie insisted. “The Examiner’s just teleporting the robots for safekeeping overnight!”
John looked again. He could see all the robots were being zapped away. Cammy vanished in a red flash as he watched.
“Oh,” he said. “Phew. Sorry. Bit worked up.”
“Come on. Let’s get some rest,” Emmie said with a grin. “Don’t want to be all sleepy when the competition starts tomorrow, do you?”
“Dunno if I can sleep now,” John said. “It’s too exciting.”
“Looking forward to it now?” Emmie asked with a smile.
“You know what? I think I am.” Especially if Super-Rover gets to crunch that robot of Mordant Talliver’s like a dog with a bone...
John slept uneasily. He dreamt that a crowd of Examiners was chasing him down a never-ending corridor, firing beams of red light at him.
When his alarm went off, he sat up bolt upright, breathing hard.
“Quick, get dressed, John!” Kaal called from his side of the dorm. “The competition starts in twenty minutes, and I don’t want to be late.”
John pulled on his clothes, feeling nervous and apprehensive. All the excitement of the day before seemed to have evaporated overnight. Now he just felt like he was going to be tested and, in all likelihood, fall at the first hurdle. There were hundreds of students at the school, most of them older and more experienced than he was, and there were to be only six possible finalists. He’d never made a robot before. Why was he even trying to compete, with the odds stacked against him like that? They must be thousands to one. And what if he looked like a joke in front of the whole school?
I have to make it through to the final somehow, he decided. I’ve got just as much of a right to be there as any of them. I belong here.
“Wake up time!” Zepp said, and a full glass emerged through the top of the bedside table.
John rubbed sleep out of his eyes and tried to focus. “Is that orange juice?”
“It’s orange, and it’s juice... that’s what you wanted, right?”
John sipped it and made a face. “This tastes like bat poo!”
“Lots of things in the universe have orange-coloured juice,” said Zepp, sounding confused. “Anyhow, you need to be at the Sonic Sports Hall in ten minutes.”
“Where’s that?” John asked.
“Come on,” Kaal said impatiently. “If you’re quick, I’ll show you.”
John drank down the glass of juice that was orange in colour but had nothing to do with oranges and headed out of the room.
John wondered if the Sonic Sports Hall was on some deep level of the ship he’d never been to yet. Hyperspace High was full of unexplored corridors and shifting walkways. But Kaal seemed to be leading him to the normal sports halls on the west side of the ship. Surely none of them were big enough?
When they reached the large, brilliantly lit hall, he understood. The dividing walls between all the sports halls had sunk into the floor – he could see the faint lines where they had been – and this created one enormous open space.
“The teachers can remodel the ship,” Kaal explained. “It can even split into separate ships in an emergency.”
“Cool,” John said, impressed. But his mind was saying something else: How can I ever
learn my way around in this school if the walls don’t even stay in one place?
The Sonic Sports Hall was big enough to dock an aircraft carrier. From the ceiling hung racks of spotlights and force-field generators, able to suspend students in bubbles of elastic energy for games of Zero-G Impactball or to create instant arenas for martial arts duels. Matter stream cylinders could provide any surface needed for sports – sand, earth, water, and even lava – and disintegrate it again afterward.
The robots were stationed at the near end of the hall, arranged in a neat row, and in faintly glowing starting zones. Two Examiners hovered over them, keeping a careful watch.
John saw Electric E, IFI, Quondass’s huge drill-like robot, one that looked like a dustbin with short, dumpy legs, and several others – more than he had time to count. And there was Super-Rover, sitting on his haunches like a real dog, as if he were waiting patiently for John. At the far end of the hall was a faint blue light, filling the space from the floor to the ceiling.
A section of floor beside them had been raised to make a stage. Master Tronic stood there, just visible behind the crowd of students that had already begun to gather.
“Welcome to the contest!” he boomed. “The first round is a simple test of speed. The first six robots to cross the finish line in each year group will be the winners of this round!” He gestured with a metal fist to the glimmering blue field.
“Sounds simple enough,” Kaal shrugged.
“Yeah,” said John. “It’s not rocket science, is it?”
Kaal looked puzzled. “Of course not. This is Robotics. Rocket Science is next term.”
John rolled his eyes and went to join the crowd that was already checking out the robots. With more than a thousand to see, it was like being at a futuristic art exhibition.
Some of the older students had done unbelievable work. A crowd had gathered around Prince Karfelan, a tall, grey-skinned alien with oval black eyes, who had built a robot that was a living swarm of tiny, smaller robots. Stylish, John thought, but not as fast as his own little dog robot.
John turned his attention to the competition from his own year. Many were obviously no-hopers – jumbled, botched, or just plain weird, like the centipede with an air horn for a nose or the thing like a goldfish bowl on triangular wheels. Maybe John had a better chance than he thought!
“Competitors!” roared Master Tronic. “Take your places behind your robots! If you have controllers, activate them now!”
With his heart beating madly, John went and stood behind Super-Rover and switched on his controller. To his right, Kaal was firing up a controller of his own. His robot, Laserdon, was hawk-like, with a fierce light burning in its eyes.
“I reckon you’re in with a good chance in this round,” John told him. “Laserdon looks fast!”
“Not as fast as Cammy,” Kaal said modestly, looking over at Emmie’s sleek robot. “Have you seen Silverfire, though? Shazilda’s built her for nothing but speed!”
Shazilda was a cocky, purple-skinned girl from the planet Pellgrayne; her robot looked like a rotating silver bullet, hovering a few centimetres above the ground.
“The race will begin in ten seconds!” Master Tronic announced, the red light in his head now pulsing furiously.
“Good luck,” John said to Kaal. His friend returned a determined smile.
A high-pitched whistle sounded.
In the next second, the hall was filled with the whirring, buzzing, thrumming, screeching noises of a thousand robots launching themselves into the race. Aluminium-covered cockroaches raced against trundling battle tanks. Scuttling pyramids with wobbly eyes shouldered aside chattering androids with chomping jaws. But out in front of all of them was Silverfire, rushing through the air like a high-tech express train.
Super-Rover was hot on Silverfire’s trail. John rammed his speed control up to full, steering him around other robots that had capsized, suffered power failure, or – in one case – burst into flames.
Super-Rover’s springy little legs were a blur. John bashed the jump button, sending Super-Rover in a graceful leap over a burning robot. Laserdon glided along behind them. Kaal’s face was a green mask of pure concentration.
Silverfire whizzed into the blue field, finishing first out of the whole contest, followed closely by Dol’s eel-like robot.
There was nobody else in front. John leaned into the final stretch, sure of finishing next. But then Cammy appeared out of nowhere, right ahead of him! He heard Emmie laugh. “Surprise!” she said, as her streamlined camouflage robot whizzed through the blue field.
Super-Rover charged through seconds later. John leaped up and punched the air. He’d done it – the first round was down!
Laserdon was hot on Super-Rover’s heels, and John saw Kaal smiling at his achievement. John quickly counted – only one more place left. The remaining robots wheezed and whined as they struggled to cross the distance. IFI zipped in front of them, moving easily on its force field. As John looked on, Mordant’s robot swerved out in front of two others, a barrel-like stomper and an elegant tripod. The barrel swerved, too, trying to avoid IFI, and smashed into the tripod, sending it toppling over. The students controlling them yelled angrily.
“Cunning move, sir!” said G-Vez. “Nothing in the rules that says you can’t go sideways, is there, sir?”
“That’s two less losers to worry about,” gloated Mordant. “OK, I’m bored now. Let’s go.” He pressed a control, and IFI zoomed silently over the finish line.
“And master is through to the next round!” G-Vez cheered.
“I could have been first if I’d wanted to.” Mordant put his hands behind his head as if this had all been too easy.
“The race is now over!” announced Master Tronic as the field suddenly turned red with a buzz.
There was a chorus of disappointed awwww sounds from the gathered students. The hall was still full of robots ponderously tromping towards the finish. John felt a little sorry for them, despite his own victory.
“All those who have qualified for the next round will now be transferred to the ship’s main hangar,” Master Tronic said. “To save time, we will be using sonic transference!”
John had only a second to wonder what that was. Then a dizzy feeling came over him, and his vision started to blur...
Chapter 6
The next thing John knew, he was standing in the hangar. It was a huge space, easily as big as the Sonic Sports Hall, with one side closed off by a gigantic set of vertical sliding doors. Beyond those doors lay nothing but space itself. It always gave him an uneasy feeling to think about how close that never-ending void really was.
The sonic transference waves had set down the students in order of year. John found he was standing with Shazilda, Emmie, Kaal, Mordant, and Dol the P’Sidion.
“I guess we’re through to round two!” Emmie smiled.
“Give that girl a gold star,” Mordant scoffed. “Of course we are, you moron. Why else would we be here?”
Before John could say what he was thinking, Master Tronic began his next announcement. “This is the Black Tunnel Test! In this round, we will test your robots’ agility. Speed and weapons count for nothing. Only careful manoeuvring will see you through.”
Master Tronic pressed a button on his arm. Suddenly, a swirling black opening like an upright whirlpool appeared in front of the contestants. It formed one end of a long, flat-bottomed tube that extended away from Master Tronic’s podium and wound around the hangar in a zigzagging, spiralling maze, returning in a circle to open back out at the podium.
“This’ll be easy,” Mordant snorted. “Even with all those twists, the tunnel’s three times as wide as any robot here.”
“I should probably mention,” Master Tronic added with a hint of menace, “that the tunnel is self-adjusting. It will shrink to fit whichever robot enters it. You will have very little c
learance to work with.”
“That’s you told, Mordant,” bubbled Dol.
Master Tronic continued. “Rules of this round are simple. The aim is to guide your robot through the black tunnel without touching the sides or the top. You may, of course, touch the floor.”
It’s like those buzz games, John thought. With the wiggly metal wire and the loop you have to weave around it. I was always pretty good at those!
To his surprise, some of the older students were whispering among themselves. John saw nervous faces.
“What’s up with them?” he asked Kaal.
“None of them were prepared for anything like this,” Kaal said. “This challenge has never been in the contest before.”
“Good!” Emmie said. “That means we’re all equal.”
Mordant Talliver rolled his eyes. “As if.”
Dol raised her flipper-like arm. “Sir? Is there a time limit?”
“Good question,” the robot-bodied teacher said. “You have fifteen minutes each to complete the test, but most students do not take that long.”
Surprised murmurs broke out among the students.
“Like I said, speed is not the point of this round,” Master Tronic repeated firmly. “However, if your robot so much as brushes the sides or top of the tunnel, you are out of the competition. Any other questions?”
“How are we supposed to see our robots inside that tunnel?” asked Kaal hesitantly.
Master Tronic held up a pair of goggles. “We’ve thought of that. These will let you see through the tunnel walls. Everyone else can watch the robots go through the tunnel on the tracker-cam, since a plain black tunnel isn’t very interesting to look at.” He pointed to a huge screen on the wall. “Now, would anyone care to volunteer to go first?”
John heard Emmie take a deep breath. “I’ll go,” she said. Then she turned to John and whispered, “May as well get this over and done with.”