Ambush

by Sigmund Brouwer

  I waved one more time, then pointed at the open cargo door.

  Her robot waved back and nodded.

  I pushed forward. We had work to do.

  The cargo bay had an inner door, which sealed the Moon Racer from outer space while the outer door was open. For humans who had to return to the inside of the Moon Racer, this was important. On their return from space the outer door would be closed and sealed, then the inner door opened, allowing air back into the cargo bay. Without the outer door closed again, it would be suicide for everyone in the Moon Racer to open the inner door.

  For robots, however, it didn’t matter. Not if they didn’t ever need to get inside the Moon Racer. That simple fact was the only chance of survival for everyone else.

  Because what we had to do would mean destroying the outer wide, flat cargo door.

  I hit a propellant button on my handjet and pushed toward the cargo door.

  Ashley followed. Each robot was attached to the wall of the cargo bay by hundreds of yards of thin cable that would prevent it from being lost in space.

  Near the hinges of the cargo door, I stopped. I was now half inside the cargo bay and half outside, with the door wide open. I looked down at my wheels. Below, nothingness stretched to infinity.

  It was not the time to enjoy a view, however. I clicked the button that fired up the welder’s torch.

  Ashley and I had gone over this a dozen times inside the spaceship. She knew what her robot had to do. I knew my robot’s job. I nodded one more time to let her know I was ready.

  She tucked her own handjet under the robot arm so both hands were free.

  My handjet was off, and I used it to tap a spot on the edge of the door near the lower hinge.

  Immediately Ashley’s robot placed the end of one of the metal strips against the spot I had touched. Her robot held it there while I welded it on. The weld cooled almost instantly in the black chill of space. I handed her robot the torch and bent the strip upward, then back down, so it formed an upside-down U. I took the torch from her robot and welded the other end of the strip in place. We had formed our first bracket.

  We did it again, a little higher. The two brackets were now a shoulder width apart.

  Then we moved outward, staying with the door. At the opposite end of the door, near the latch that would hold it in place when it was shut, my robot body hung motionless, with infinity stretching in every direction.

  But it was still no time to enjoy the view. Or even to marvel at the fact that we clung to a spaceship moving at thousands upon thousands of miles per hour, but without air around us, we didn’t seem to be moving at all.

  On this end of the door, I welded one bracket, then another. These two were also a shoulder width apart, roughly parallel with the two on the other side. Now we had four primitive handholds permanently attached to the inner side of the door.

  Aware of how important it was to move quickly, I pointed at the last two brackets. Ashley’s robot nodded and handed me the remaining four strips of metal. I bent them in a rough circle around the edge of one of my robot wheels. I nodded.

  Her robot grabbed a bracket in each hand and hung there from the outer edge of the door, as if hanging from a handhold in the corridor of the Moon Racer. Her robot remained there while I used my handjet to move back to the hinges. Without hesitation, using the incredible heat of the welding torch in my other hand, I cut the hinges loose. The door fell away from the Moon Racer.

  With Ashley’s robot still hanging from the brackets, I guided the door through the weightlessness of outer space, back toward the ion thruster of the Moon Racer.

  We were halfway done.

  The ion thruster was simply a giant nozzle that directed a stream of propelling ions into space. If Lance had not been able to turn down the fuel-burn ratio earlier, our plan would not have had a chance.

  As it was, it would still be tricky.

  When we arrived, I used my handjet to push the wheels of Ashley’s robot against the outer wall of the giant nozzle. I took one of the strips of metal I’d wrapped around my own robot wheels and bent it into another U. I turned the U upside down and put it between the spokes of one of her robot wheels. I welded one end to the outer wall of the thruster, then the other. I had just bracketed her robot permanently into place. I did the same with her other wheel.

  All of this happened in slow-motion ballet. Movements in outer space have to be smooth and even, something I had learned the hard way during virtual-reality sessions. I wished it could go faster, but I had to get it right the first time.

  It did look strange.

  Her robot was now attached by its wheels to the outside of the thruster nozzle. And its hands held the brackets I had welded on the cargo door.

  Three-quarters of the way there.

  I left Ashley’s robot there and pushed around to the opposite side of the ion thruster. With the final two strips of metal, I welded U-shaped strips around my own wheels so that my robot, too, was permanently attached to the outside of the thruster nozzle.

  I waved at Ashley’s robot on the other side of the nozzle.

  It was weird, thinking that each of these robot bodies moved because of the brain-wave impulses that Ashley and I were sending to computers inside the Moon Racer. And weird to think that very soon Ashley and I would wake up inside the robot lab, with these two robots remaining out here, doing a highly unexpected job. If my plan worked.

  I nodded one final time and watched as her robot began to swing the door down toward the opening of the thruster. Had there been ions streaming out, it would have blown the door backward like a flap in the wind. Instead, her robot was able to lower the door until my robot could grab the handhold brackets on the opposite side.

  Just like that, we were finished.

  Now there was a robot on each side, holding the door like an umbrella, just a few feet above the nozzle of the ion thruster.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Ready?” Dad asked Lance.

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” he replied.

  Ashley and I crowded behind Dad as he watched the monitor with Lance. Everyone else was in the entertainment cluster, waiting just as anxiously as we were.

  “Then fire it up,” Dad said. “We need to start as soon as possible. My calculations show we’ll barely make it as it is.”

  If it works, I thought.

  Lance rapidly keyed some commands.

  For several seconds, nothing happened.

  “Is the fuel-burn ratio up?” Dad asked.

  Lance pointed at the computer screen. “That’s what it says. But it always takes a bit of time for the ions to—”

  Bang!

  The Moon Racer lurched, throwing us to the side.

  All of us hit the opposite wall as the Moon Racer suddenly slowed.

  And we began to cheer! More cheers reached us from the corridor. The others, too, understood we had just felt sudden deceleration.

  It had worked.

  The cargo door was now funneling the ions in the same way that a reverse thruster would!

  Dad hugged me. I hugged Ashley. Lance hugged all three of us.

  “Okay,” Dad said. “Lance, monitor it closely. But thanks to Tyce and Ashley’s quick work to help us slow down and the fuel we have left, we should get this thing almost to a standstill by the time we reach Earth. And with the emergency locator, someone will find us soon enough.”

  Lance’s big grin faded.

  “I know. I know,” Dad said. “Then you’ll face arrest when we get Earth-side. But with all that you’ve done now and if you testify against Dr. Jordan and Luke Daab, I don’t think it will be as bad as you expect. And I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  Trouble was, almost three weeks later, when the soldiers of a military rescue shuttle boarded the ship, the first people arrested were Dad and me.

  CHAPTER 26

  03.27.2040

  Of all my dreams about Earth, I never expected I would get here and not see anything except four
walls of a prison cell. I now know the true definition of misery. My body aches. After a lifetime of gravity at only one-third of the planet Earth’s, my bones feel heavy, my muscles weak, and my lungs tired. At every point where my body sits in my wheelchair, my skin is raw from the unaccustomed weight and pressure. I can’t imagine how much worse this would have been if I hadn’t been working out daily during the trip from Mars to Earth.

  Dad said it would take a week at least to adjust to the new gravity, but I wonder if I ever will.

  As for my dreams about all the different foods I’d be able to try, those too have become a nightmare. Prison food is horrible.

  I don’t know exactly where I am, just that it’s some windowless room the size of a closet, and it has been two days since our arrest.

  I haven’t seen my dad. Or Ashley. And I’m not sure what happened to them or the others because we were arrested so quickly. All I have is my compboard, and even its files were searched, copied, and transferred before I could keep it.

  So now I’m writing my journal in case Dad or Mom or Rawling ever gets ahold of this.

  All I can do is hope….

  I stopped keyboarding at the sound of scratching on my prison door. It sounded like the guard’s keys. Which meant I would get yet another rotten meal.

  It wasn’t a guard. But a robot!

  “Hello,” a familiar voice said from the robot’s speakers. “You all right, Tyce?”

  “Ashley? Ashley!” I pushed forward, expecting that I would float through the air in her direction. Nothing happened. I was on Earth, not in the freedom and weightlessness of space.

  “Shhh!” she said anxiously. “We only have about five minutes.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “What else?” she said. “Escape. You and I have a lot to do before all of this is over.”

  SCIENCE AND GOD

  You’ve probably noticed that the question of God’s existence comes up in Robot Wars.

  It’s no accident, of course. I think this is one of the most important questions that we need to decide for ourselves. If God created the universe and there is more to life than what we can see, hear, taste, smell, or touch, that means we have to think of our own lives as more than just the time we spend on Earth.

  On the other hand, if this universe was not created and God does not exist, then that might really change how you view your existence and how you live.

  Sometimes science is presented in such a way that it suggests there is no God. To make any decision, it helps to know as much about the situation as possible. As you decide for yourself, I’d like to show in the Robot Wars series that many, many people—including famous scientists—don’t see science this way.

  As you might guess, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about science and God, and I’ve spent a lot of time reading about what scientists have learned and concluded. Because of this, I wrote a nonfiction book called Who Made The Moon? and you can find information about it at www.whomadethemoon.com. If you ever read it, you’ll see why science does not need to keep anyone away from God.

  With that in mind, I’ve added a little bit more to this book—a couple of essays about the science in journals one and two of Robot Wars, based on what you can find in Who Made The Moon?

  Sigmund Brouwer

  whomadethemoon.com

  JOURNAL ONE

  DOES GOD SPEAK TO PEOPLE?

  Q: Does God speak to people?

  A: I believe yes.

  Perhaps not with an actual voice. But through our conscience, through quiet moments when we suddenly understand something that wasn’t clear before, through the gentle instruction from other people who know him well.

  But what many people struggle with is that the ways God speaks to us often can’t be proven. As Tyce learns in this book, having faith in God means you decide to trust him, even when you can’t see the outcome. Since scientists are used to seeing results and proof, and since it’s scientifically impossible to prove God exists, some of them want to think the only things that exist are the things you can measure.

  Why do so many scientists see a conflict between science (data that can be proven by A + B = C) and faith (something you feel inside your heart and believe with your mind but can’t hear, taste, or touch)? It’s true that believing in God means taking a leap of faith. But believing in God isn’t totally illogical, as some people believe.

  You see, humans are not just made of body and mind. We are capable of love. Of loneliness. Of longing. Things that can’t be measured or found during a medical examination. Things that also point to the existence of a soul.

  When God speaks to us, I believe he speaks to our souls.

  As Tyce realized in this book, we just have to find those quiet moments where we can hear him. We have to learn to listen.

  JOURNAL TWO

  WILL COMPUTERS SOMEDAY REPLACE MAN?

  Q: Are computers smarter than people?

  A: Computers already surround us. And in the future, they’ll become even more important. Just look at Tyce Sanders’s world, where Lance Evenson, the chief computer technician, is the most important person on the Moon Racer! After all, he’s the guy who keeps the computers running on this intergalactic 2040 spaceship.

  But you know what? This mission shows that all the technology in the world can’t match our human ingenuity. When the computer system is useless, Tyce’s creativity—using the robots to slow down the Moon Racer—is what saves the spaceship from shooting past Earth into deep, black nothingness. Tyce’s dad’s quick, instinctive reactions keep the hatch door from locking them in. And Tyce even has to “rescue” the antbot by knotting threads from a regulation jumpsuit to fish the robot out of the air vent. I guess robots aren’t so smart after all!

  Q: Why does God want us to make good decisions?

  A: Humans created robots and computers, and that’s why they have problems. It’s because we humans aren’t perfect, either. Although we are created by God, in his image, he gives us a choice: Will we follow him and his ways or not?

  Some people, like Blaine Steven, count on technology and power to get what they want. But such things can’t save them from possible death. When ex-director Steven thought he might die, all of a sudden he began to ask Tyce questions about faith and God. Tyce was shocked, because Steven seemed like somebody who’d never want to know—or care—about religion.

  But appearances can be deceiving. Tyce found that out the hard way. He had accused Lance Evenson, who looked like a tough guy, of being the mastermind behind the plot. When the whole time it was actually weak and drab Luke Daab who fooled them all.

  We humans look at appearances, but God looks at the heart. Because God loves us, he encourages us to make right decisions. Why? Because he knows bad decisions can affect us for a lifetime and he hurts when we hurt. He also knows that such a lifestyle drives us away from him.

  Q: Can you ever do something so wrong that God will never take you back?

  A: Now that my wife, Cindy, and I have two daughters, Olivia and Savannah, I understand even more fully the promises that God made to us as humans. No matter what lifestyle decisions our daughters might ever make down the road, no matter how far away from us they might go, all they would have to do is turn around and reach out for us, and we would take them back with joy.

  The same is true with God and his love for us. No matter how far we might stray from him, he is always waiting with love and hope for our return. (Just read the parable of the Prodigal Son for proof!)

  When Jesus walked this world, he had an incredible message. You see, the religious leaders of his time taught that in order to approach God and be with him, you had to first make yourself right by paying penalties for what you had done wrong. Jesus said it was the opposite. All you need to do is approach God through his Son, Jesus, admit your wrongs, and ask for forgiveness. Then God will enter your life and transform it, giving you hope, peace, and joy for the future. Then, when life on this Earth is over, you’ll find your real
home. In heaven. In God’s love.

  And that’s something only humans can experience—not computers.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sigmund Brouwer and his wife, recording artist Cindy Morgan, and their daughters split living between Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, and Nashville, Tennessee. He has written several series of juvenile fiction and eight novels. Sigmund loves sports and plays golf and hockey. He also enjoys visiting schools to talk about books. He welcomes visitors to his Web site at www.coolreading.com.