It took Dad a few seconds to make his calculation. “They’ll be in orbit range of Earth in 10 days. And we’re not scheduled to arrive for almost three weeks.”
“Wrong.” Lance had dropped from the travel tube into the navigation cone.
“Wrong?” Dad repeated.
“Wrong,” he said, frowning. “But let me give you all the good news first. That radio signal you want me to send ahead with news about his escape? Except for an emergency beacon, our mainframe won’t permit any communications. In or out of the ship. It’s part of the pre-programming that was coded into the mainframe without our authorization.”
“That’s the good news?” Dad said.
“Sure,” Lance said in a voice heavy with sarcasm. “Plus the fact that I still can’t break the computer code that has locked down all the hatches. Everyone is still stuck in their bunks with no access to food or water.”
“Any more good news?”
“Unless you want to know that I found a wire from the mainframe to an infrared antenna in the ceiling panel halfway down the corridor. Which means whoever did the new programming had as much time as they wanted to make it foolproof. Which means I’m not sure I can break the new code soon enough. Unless I find the computer that wrote that code.”
“Soon enough?”
Lance shook his head. “Sure. Now I get to tell you the bad news. Our ion engine is burning fuel at a tremendous rate. Remember the acceleration jolt we felt just before the siren went off?”
Dad nodded.
“Mainframe again. Instructing the engine to go into overdrive. Our engine is set at maximum, and every 30 minutes we’re picking up speed at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour. By tomorrow, we’ll be close to 50,000 miles an hour faster than we are now. With that much speed, we’ll probably pass the escape pod before it’s halfway to Earth.”
Looking out through the navigation cone gave me no sense of the speed of our ship. Unlike on the surface of Mars—where the nearby boulders served as reference points and even 20 miles an hour seemed fast because of it—here in space the nearest reference points were billions of miles away. It took days to see any shift, so it never felt like we were moving.
“Lance, you’ve got to slow this down,” Dad said. “With that kind of speed, hitting a pebble could blow us apart. And—” He stopped as his face suddenly went blank.
“Exactly,” Lance said. “Getting blown apart might be the best we could hope for.”
“What?” I asked. “If we don’t hit anything, what can be so bad about reaching Earth’s orbit so soon? We’ll even beat Dr. Jordan there and be able to wait for him and save Luke.”
“We’ll reach Earth’s orbit,” Lance agreed. Quietly. “And then blow through it and past it.”
“Tyce,” Dad added, “at the beginning of a space journey like this, fuel is burned to accelerate us to maximum safe speed. Once we’re at that speed, we coast with no friction to slow us down. Some fuel is burned in the middle for slight adjustments in the flight course. If the calculations are done right, there’s enough fuel left at the end of the journey to put the engine in a reverse thrust and slow us down. That’s space travel. Gradual acceleration. Followed by gradual deceleration. With just enough fuel loaded to take care of both.”
Did that mean what I thought it meant?
Dad continued. “Our fuel margins are thin anyway. We build in about a 10 percent error rate. What’s happening now is that every hour of fuel we burn puts us in double jeopardy. It’s an extra hour of gained speed and one less hour of fuel to slow us down. Lance, have you done the rest of the calculations?”
“Yes. And that’s the worst news I can deliver.”
“I’d rather know it now,” Dad said.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it.
“If I can’t find a way to break the programming code sometime in the next two hours,” Lance told us, “we may have gained too much speed. Burning what remains of our fuel with the reverse thruster after that will only slow us down to a couple thousand miles per hour. And then no more fuel. There will be nothing left to bring us to a stop. And you know how it is in space. We’ll just keep coasting at that speed.”
At a couple thousand miles per hour. Forever?
“What if you can’t break the programming code at all?” Dad asked.
“We continue accelerating until the fuel is gone. We pass the Earth at over 100,000 miles per hour. Headed straight toward the sun.”
That’s what Dr. Jordan meant when he told us to start putting on sunscreen. He knew exactly what had been planned.
Dad closed his eyes, then opened them. He spoke very calmly. “What you’re saying is that in two hours, even if the computer lets us start communicating with anyone on Earth, there is no way any orbit shuttle would be able to catch or stop this ship as it flew past.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Lance agreed. “We’re only going to live as long as our food supplies last. Unless we hit the sun first.”
CHAPTER 22
Diabolical.
That’s the only way I can describe it.
I’m not even sure there is any point in writing any of this in my journal. After all, who will ever be able to read it when my comp-board and everything else on this ship burns down to a collection of atoms and molecules spewed out of the sun?
Or maybe we’ll miss the sun and head to the outer reaches of the solar system, then beyond. Our ship will be lifeless, carrying only skeletons. And it’s not likely that anyone would ever find this ghost ship and read my journal.
All because of that diabolical Dr. Jordan.
By getting into the mainframe, he had set the ship’s engine on maximum burn. If that wasn’t enough, he blocked our communications systems so we couldn’t radio for help or send a message explaining how he’d doomed the ship. And if that wasn’t enough insurance to make sure no one lived, Dr. Jordan had the computer close down every hatch so everyone would be trapped in their bunks. Only because Dad had reacted quickly and instinctively did that final part of Dr. Jordan’s plan fail. Well, at least with Dr. Jordan now escaped, I don’t have to worry about someone logging on to my comp-board.
In the silence and privacy of my own bunk, I stopped keyboarding.
Almost two hours had passed since our discussion in the navigation cone. Long enough for Dad to manually break open every hatch door and let everyone out and tell them the bad news. And long enough for us to pass the point of no return. Now, even if Lance regained control of the mainframe, we didn’t have enough fuel to bring the ship to a stop. Now, even if we could start the communications system, an SOS for help would do no good. We were traveling too fast for any military ship to rescue us.
SOS.
When I’d asked, Dad had explained that SOS meant “save our souls,” a plea from sinking ships when the ancient technology of wireless telegraph meant messages had to be sent by something called Morse code.
Save our souls.
Believe it or not, Blaine Steven, stuck behind with the rest of us, had actually started praying with Dad. Funny how the thought of death makes a person also think of God. Especially a person I’d assumed would never be faintly interested in God.
And Lance Evenson?
He’d told us the rest of the story behind the disc in his air vent. How from the beginning of his time on Mars he’d allowed an unknown someone access to the Mars Dome’s mainframe. It had been ridiculously simple, he’d explained. All it took was giving that person the access code.
Why? Dad had asked.
Money, Lance had explained. Enough retirement money that when he returned to Earth, he would have no worries. He’d thought that taking all the information, including the security override program, with him on the disc would be insurance in case someone found out what he did and tried to blackmail him.
Who? Dad had asked.
That was just it, Lance had answered. He never knew. The money went into a bank account on Earth with regular payments that he could c
heck with e-mail requests from Mars. All Lance knew was that it had to be someone on Mars who had also been there from the beginning. And that this unknown person had access to a computer that tapped into the Mars Dome mainframe. Just like he’d done it on this spaceship.
I read from the beginning of what I had typed.
One sentence stuck out.
Well, at least with Dr. Jordan now escaped, I don’t have to worry about someone logging on to my comp-board.
Why had I assumed I didn’t have to worry about it anymore? It wasn’t Dr. Jordan who had logged on to my comp-board. He didn’t have any access to a computer in his prison bunk. No. He’d been cabled to the wall just like Blaine Steven. Any access that Dr. Jordan did have could only have happened during the midnight-to-early-morning hours when he was out of his bunk, as shown by the computer’s activity log of the hatch openings to his prison bunk.
Someone else on this ship had helped him get in and out of his bunk. Was that person still on the ship?
No, I decided, definitely not. Because the computer had slammed shut all the hatches, trapping everyone in their bunks. And because the computer had programmed the engine and communications system to make sure everyone remaining on the ship would die sooner or later. Whoever had helped Dr. Jordan would do his or her best not to be on the ship when the escape pod ejected.
But the only person off the ship right now with Dr. Jordan was Luke Daab.
In all that had happened since their escape, none of us had questioned why Dr. Jordan had taken a hostage with him. That was one extra person to use food and water on the escape pod. Dr. Jordan didn’t need a hostage if everyone left behind on the ship was going to die anyway. Unless Luke wasn’t a hostage.
Luke Daab. The same Luke Daab who had made it possible for Dr. Jordan to ask Ashley about her escape from the Hammerhead space torpedo?
Now I knew why Dr. Jordan had wanted to know. To make sure Ashley didn’t have some unexpected way of getting out of the Moon Racer. Or some unexpected way of rescuing us.
But Luke Daab?
Images flashed into my mind. Luke in the computer room, with wall panels out and wiring exposed. Luke in the corridor, with ceiling panels out and wiring exposed. Luke working wherever he wanted on the ship, almost invisible to people who passed by him.
A maintenance engineer could come and go anywhere on the ship without ever being questioned. Just like a maintenance engineer could come and go anywhere under the dome without ever being questioned. The same maintenance engineer who had been under the Mars Dome since it had been first established.
Luke Daab?
Another image flashed into my mind. Of Luke shouting something as Ashley and Dad and I had rushed down the corridor and first met them about to enter the escape pod. Something we couldn’t hear above the noise of the wailing siren. I had assumed he was shouting to us. What if he had been shouting to Dr. Jordan?
If Luke was the mastermind behind all of this, maybe he was commanding Dr. Jordan to make it look like a hostage situation. Commanding Dr. Jordan to put a choke hold on him and fool us.
But why? If Luke had set it up so that we were all going to die anyhow, why would he want us to think he was a helpless victim? So Dad wouldn’t shoot them with the neuron gun? No. The mainframe had already been programmed to shut the neuron gun down. Luke and Dr. Jordan knew that. They weren’t afraid of the neuron gun.
So we wouldn’t tackle them? No, by the time we got there, they were close enough to jump into the escape pod before we could close the gap.
Then why go to the pretense of making it look like a hostage situation?
When the answer hit me, I shouted out loud.
Then raced to find Dad.
CHAPTER 23
“Here! I found it!”
Dad’s voice rang inside the walls of Luke Daab’s bunk.
There were three of us. Dad. Ashley. Me. All of us pulling away wall and ceiling panels to find what Luke might have hidden.
Until now, we only had his personal comp-board, which he had left behind the netting of a storage shelf. But a compboard had nowhere near the power needed to crunch out the code needed to override the mainframe. Which was what I had guessed only 10 minutes earlier while keyboarding my latest journal entry.
“And it’s got an infrared antenna.” Dad pointed to a small computer hard drive nestled into a compartment behind a wall panel. “So he could not only link wireless to the mainframe but also to his comp-board. It’s the go-between computer. It could intercept anything—even Rawling’s real e-mails to you. You were right, Tyce. If Luke decided not to take this with him, he sure wouldn’t want us finding it. With any luck, Lance can use this hard drive to regain control of the mainframe.”
“Yes and no,” Lance reported to Dad a half hour later. Ashley and I had waited in the navigation cone with Dad, each of us hardly speaking because of the nervous tension.
“Yes, I’ve regained control of the mainframe,” Lance continued. “And, no, the communications system is totally disabled. As are the controls to the flaps and reverse thruster.”
“But if you’ve got the mainframe back …”
Lance laughed sourly. “The guy’s a genius. And very, very cautious. As if he anticipated the one-in-a-thousand chance we’d find his computer setup in his bunk. He programmed the mainframe alarm system to be silenced so it would seem like everything on board the ship was normal.
But it isn’t.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Dad said.
“You shouldn’t,” Lance answered. “Luke Daab wrecked the communications systems and piloting controls the old-fashioned way. With a hammer.”
“With a hammer!” It was as if Lance had slapped Dad’s face.
Lance nodded. “He was the maintenance engineer. Always carried his tool belt. Had the perfect excuse to be wherever he wanted on the ship. Sometime in the last day or two he took a hammer to the physical components of the systems. Just like he destroyed all the vital computer parts of the second escape pod to make sure we couldn’t eject it if somehow we regained control of the mainframe. Normally the mainframe would clang out alarm bells louder than a fire alarm as soon as it detected the malfunction. But with the computer programmed to ignore the malfunction signals …”
“We’ve got nothing, then. We’re stuck on a ship with no communications and no manual piloting controls.”
“All I was able to do was reduce the burn rate of our fuel to nothing, for now. We’ve stopped accelerating. Even so, if we don’t figure out a way to start slowing down in the next hour, we’ll shoot too far past Earth for our emergency beacon to reach anyone.”
“So if we are somehow able to start slowing down right away,” Ashley said, “someone might come looking?”
“If we stop.” Dad swung in his chair to face her squarely. “And if we stop close enough to the orbital shipping lanes between Earth and Mars. Neither possibility gives us much hope.”
I hadn’t spoken since Lance had entered the navigation cone. “There is,” I said, “one tiny chance.”
Everyone stared at me.
“Hey,” I finished, “the big bots are still in the cargo bay, aren’t they?”
CHAPTER 24
Darkness.
Since I wasn’t receiving the light signals through human eyes, waiting wasn’t going to help my vision adjust. But that didn’t matter. I knew that within moments light from the stars and sun would flood the inside of the cargo bay.
I heard a muted clank as the lock released. Then a hiss as the vacuum of outer space sucked the air out of the cargo bay. That was the last sound I could expect to hear. Sound does not travel in a vacuum, and the cargo bay slowly swung open to expose my robot body to the open solar system.
Light entered. The light of millions of galaxies and billions of stars, so diamond clear that I felt a thrill of incredible joy.
There was movement beside me. The other robot, controlled by Ashley. Like me, she was hooked by remote to a computer
hard drive in the robot center inside the Moon Racer.
The robot waved. I waved back.
She had a newer model, but both were constructed with similar designs.
The lower body of the robot is much like my wheelchair. Instead of a pair of legs, an axle connects two wheels. On land, just like a wheelchair, it turns by moving one wheel forward while the other wheel remains motionless or moves backward.
The robot’s upper body is a short, thick, hollow pole that sticks through the axle, with a heavy weight to counterbalance the arms and head. Within this weight is the battery that powers the robot, with wires running up inside the hollow pole.
At the upper end of the pole is a crosspiece to which arms are attached. The arms swing freely without hitting the wheels. Like the rest of the robot, they are made of titanium and are jointed like human arms, with one difference. All the joints swivel. The hands, too, are like human hands, but with only three fingers and a thumb instead of four fingers and a thumb.
Four video lenses at the top of the pole serve as eyes. One faces forward, one backward, and one to each side.
Three tiny microphones, attached to the underside of the video lenses, play the role of ears, taking in sound. The fourth speaker, underneath the video lens that faces forward, produces sound and allows us to make our voices heard.
The computer drive is well protected within the hollow titanium pole that serves as the robot’s upper body. Since it’s mounted on shock absorbers, the robot can fall 10 feet without shaking the computer drive. This computer drive has a short antenna plug at the back of the pole to send and receive X-ray signals.
Both of our robots held handjets in their right hands to allow us to propel the robots through space. My own robot held a welder’s torch in the left hand. Ashley’s robot held eight narrow strips of metal, all of them about two feet long. Everything had been placed in the cargo bay before Ashley and I had started the control sequence.
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