Rawling walked past me and shut the door. Then he spoke so quietly that I could barely hear him. “I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you. … Remember when the last shuttle arrived?”
Of course I did. Shuttles arrived from Earth only every three years. They were the lifeblood of the Mars Project, bringing new scientists and technicians and supplies, then returning to Earth with the scientists and techies who had finished their duty. As if that wasn’t enough reason for me to remember, my dad was a space pilot, and he’d returned to Mars with the last shuttle. After getting to know him all over again, I’d finally started to like having him around.
“The Hammerhead does exist, Tyce,” Rawling said. “And it arrived with that last shuttle.”
“What! There really is a Hammerhead?” This was great. I could go into space. I could fly at speeds that no human ever flew. I could—
“Don’t get too excited.” He spoke so sharply that I blinked. “Sorry.” He sighed. “The responsibilities that come with being director sometimes …”
I waited for him to finish. Suddenly the lines in his face seemed much deeper, and I saw a thicker streak of gray in his hair.
“Tyce, if you don’t learn to fly the Hammerhead like it’s part of your body, there’s a good chance the dome won’t exist in another few months.”
CHAPTER 3
09.15.2039
Computer notes, I guess, are the only journal I, Tyce Sanders, have. It’s a habit I started a few months ago when it looked like the dome was running out of oxygen. I’ve found that writing into my computer is a great way to sort out my thoughts.
And right now, after what Rawling explained to me, I have plenty to sort out.
It’s about a comet. A giant killer comet.
Rawling gave me the rundown. Far beyond the solar system, thousands, millions, or maybe even trillions of comets circle our sun in orbits that take them hundreds or thousands of years. They lurk out in the darkness, invisible because they are too far away for the sun to warm them. Every once in a while, the gravity of a nearby star will nudge them out of their orbit, sending them into the outer edges of the solar system. If Jupiter’s massive gravity pulls them closer, their orbit swings them toward the sun. That means the comet will then pass the inner planets of Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury. Sometimes the comet will hit the sun directly, blooming in incredible cosmic fireworks. Most of the time the comet flashes past the sun and heads back out to the darkness of the outer solar system, never to be seen again. But if its orbit has been changed enough, it will return again and again and again, like Halley’s comet, which passes by the Earth every 76 years.
Comets are made of three parts. The heart is a big chunk of rock and ice. Picture a big black potato, hundreds of feet wide or up to 15 miles across. The coma is the sphere of gas and dust that surrounds the rock. And following behind is the tail—ice and dust released by the sun’s heat. Even though a comet might be only a couple of miles wide, its tail can grow into a stream in the solar wind as long as a hundred million miles, reflecting the light of the sun in a dazzling display. It’s the tail of the comet that’s so beautiful.
And, like with humans, it’s the heart that’s so dangerous.
Look at it this way. Comets travel at 150,000 miles per hour. Even a small chunk of rock—say half the size of a football field—can make a crater a mile wide if it hits a planet. All it would take is the impact of a comet a couple of miles wide to destroy all life on Earth.
The comet Rawling was talking about was 12 miles wide. It—
“Hello, Mr. Sanders. Hello, Mrs. Sanders.”
I knew that voice.
“Hello, Ashley,” Mom answered. “Tyce is at his computer. Go on in.”
Which meant Ashley would be at my door in a few seconds. I swung my wheelchair away from the computer and toward the door.
“Hello, Tyce,” Ashley said from the doorway with her usual big grin.
“Hey,” I said. She and I usually went up to the dome telescope after supper. But the telescope had been malfunctioning for the last couple of weeks, and the techie in charge hadn’t been able to fix it yet. Just as well. The last thing I wanted was to look for a tiny bullet of deadly light that would show the comet getting closer to Mars by 150,000 miles every hour.
“Hey, back,” Ashley said. Then she frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Give me a break,” she said. “I can tell when something’s bothering you.”
She pulled up a chair so we were facing each other. It hadn’t taken Ashley long to get used to the fact that I was in a wheelchair. “Well, talk to me.”
“If an asteroid was going to hit a planet, how would you stop it?”
She laughed. “That is so 20th century. I mean, all you need to do is watch some of those ancient premillennium movies where everyone on Earth is doomed because of a giant asteroid.”
“And?” I insisted.
“The solution is so simple I can’t believe you’re asking. Attach a rocket engine to the asteroid and change its orbit. Alter it by a degree or two, and it misses the planet. Or blow it apart with a nuclear weapon. People stopped worrying about asteroids hitting the Earth long before we were born.”
Seeing my face, Ashley stopped laughing. “Tyce, you still look worried.”
Rawling was going to make the announcement the next morning, and I’d already told Mom and Dad at supper, so it was all right to discuss it with Ashley. She knew I worked with the robot and would find it interesting that now I was learning to fly a space torpedo.
“What if the asteroid broke up into hundreds of smaller pieces before you could divert it?” I asked. “What if any of those pieces was big enough to destroy this entire dome? And what if all of those hundreds of pieces were only two months away from hitting us?”
“Then,” she said with total seriousness, “I would start to pray. Very hard.”
“You can start tonight,” I said.
Ashley inhaled sharply.
Then I told her what Rawling had explained to me. Back in 1994, a comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9 appeared from out of the darkness beyond the solar system, like some sort of prehistoric shark cruising up from the unexplored depths of the ocean. Jupiter’s massive gravity pulled Shoemaker-Levy 9 closer and closer, and the comet crumpled. Splitting into 20 pieces, it slammed into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. Each explosion released the energy of a gigantic nuclear bomb, and it took over a year for the black clouds of the explosion to disappear from the telescopes aimed at Jupiter from Earth.
Now another comet was headed our way, like a lone black rocket of death. From what we were told by the Earth scientists, they expected this one, too, to break up as it passed Jupiter. The pieces, however, would miss Jupiter completely this time—and intercept Mars a few months later.
Unlike Jupiter, Mars has no atmosphere thousands of miles high to absorb the chunks of comet. Compared to Jupiter, Mars is the size of a marble. If only a few of those pieces hit anywhere on the planet, the impact would destroy the dome. If all those pieces hit, it could shatter the planet completely, sending a shock wave into the inner solar system. And with chunks of Mars flying in all directions, there was a big, big possibility that the Earth would be hit several months later by debris.
Rawling said it was my job to stop the comet before it stopped us.
CHAPTER 4
“Today’s a workday,” Rawling said. “Try to make it as short as possible. We want you in the virtual Hammerhead for at least a couple of hours.”
I was back in the lab again. Earlier than usual. Considering how important it was for me to fly a Hammerhead in space, Mom and Dad and Rawling had agreed that my schoolwork could be put aside for now.
“Work?” I said. “I was hoping to see the actual Hammerhead. You know, for inspiration.”
“Work,” Rawling said firmly. “We want you to try something on the dome telescope. Blowing sand out of some rotational gears. I’m hoping that’s the problem.
We need the telescope operational to allow us to track the pieces of comet as it gets closer. Right now we’re going blindly on the advice of Earth scientists who have to watch it from 50 million miles farther away. We can’t afford to make any errors as we track the pieces of comet. Last time we did that kind of maintenance we had to send techies up in space suits. Not only did it take them hours, it was dangerous work up there. You, on the other hand …”
“Rawling, I thought the purpose of all this was to be able to explore the universe. You know, go boldly with a robot where no man has gone before.”
“That too,” he said. “Just not now. If you want to feel good about this kind of work, think of what the robot body cost the space program. That makes your boring maintenance work worth millions of dollars per hour.”
Rawling helped me out of my wheelchair and onto the narrow medical bed. Then he began to strap me in place. What used to be exciting was now routine.
“For all those millions per hour, you want me to climb the ladder outside the dome?” I asked Rawling.
“Right. Techies have already set up the robot with a backpack and compressed air tank. All you have to do is blow sand out of the exposed gears. Shouldn’t take much more than five minutes. Then you can get back to the Hammerhead virtual-reality program. The sooner you’ve got the training in, the sooner we can get you into space.”
That was a good incentive. A very good incentive.
I nodded. “Checklist.”
“Checklist,” Rawling replied.
“First,” I said, “no robot contact with any electrical sources.”
“Check.”
After all, my spinal nerves were attached to the plug. Any electrical current going into or through the robot could do serious damage to the robot—and to my own brain.
Rawling snugged down the straps across my stomach and chest to keep me from moving and disengaging the plug.
“Second,” I said, continuing the list, “I disengage instantly at the first warning of any damage to the robot’s computer drive.” All I needed to do to disengage was mentally shout the word Stop!
“Check.” Rawling placed a blindfold over my eyes and strapped my head in position. While I controlled the robot body, it was important for me not to be distracted.
“The robot is at the dome entrance?” I asked.
“Outside the dome entrance. The techies moved it there already to save you the time of clearing the double entrance. And when you’re finished, leave it out there too. The techies will move it back in. That should save you 10 minutes in each direction and give you an extra 20 minutes on the Hammerhead program.”
“Robot battery at full power?”
“Yes.”
“Unplugged from all sources of electrical power?”
I already knew the answer. So did Rawling. If the robot was outside the dome, it was definitely unplugged. But Rawling was very strict about going through the entire checklist.
“Unplugged,” he answered.
“I guess we’re ready, then,” I said. “If I have any other questions, I’ll radio them in to you from the top of the dome.”
“Checklist complete,” Rawling said. He placed ear protectors on me as the last step. I was soundproofed and ready to go. I waited.
By now the sensation was familiar. In the darkness and silence of entering the robot computer, it felt like I was falling off a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.
I kept falling and falling and falling. …
CHAPTER 5
When my imaginary fall ended, I was on the surface of the planet Mars.
Although my body was still strapped on a narrow bed in the dome laboratory, all the sensations reaching my brain through the robot told me I was on the planet’s surface.
I love controlling this robot body. While my own body is in a wheelchair, this robot gives me the sensation of more freedom than any other human has experienced.
Except today wasn’t Mars exploration but maintenance work.
I still didn’t mind.
It beat sitting in a wheelchair.
I brought both the robot’s titanium hands up in front of a video lens and flexed the fingers, wiggling them to make sure everything worked properly.
I switched to the rear video lens. As promised, the compressed air backpack was in place.
I rolled forward to circle the dome.
Ashley has told me that the sky on Earth is blue and the sun is yellow but too bright to look at for more than an instant. She told me clouds are white or, if they hold rain, gray. She said when the sun rises or sets, it stays the same color, but the clouds might turn pink or red or orange or a mixture of all those colors.
On Mars, when the sun rises, it is blue against a butterscotch-colored sky.
A few hours had passed since sunrise, and now the sky was red because sunlight scattered through dust particles at a different angle. At sunrise, it had been about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Now it was 50 degrees above zero. Mars has such radical daily temperature differences because the atmosphere is too thin to hold heat. As soon as the sun set at the end of the day, the planet’s heat would bleed back into the cold of outer space.
The 40-mile-an-hour wind and the sand it threw at my titanium shell didn’t bother me. With such little atmosphere, even strong winds don’t have the force they would on Earth. And the robot body, about the size of a man, was built so tough that it would be standing long after human bodies fell.
I reached the ladder to the dome. Without hesitation, I grabbed one rung with the titanium fingers of my right hand and pulled, holding the entire weight of the robot with one arm. I reached for the next rung with my left hand. One hand after another, I climbed quickly, robot wheels bouncing against the ladder. My arms had such strength that I didn’t need to support myself with legs.
It took less than a minute to get to the top of the dome. I dragged myself onto the platform surrounding the telescope lens.
From there I had an incredible view. I saw the dome’s greenhouse about a half mile away, where scientists were trying to raise plants that would grow on the planet’s surface. As I scanned the horizon, the red mountains, and the brownish red sand of the valley plains, movement on the other side of the greenhouse caught my attention.
Movement?
It was far too small to be a platform buggy on an expedition. Unless it was a techie or a scientist in a space suit, there should be nothing moving out there except sand shifted by the wind.
I clicked my forward video lens to get a close-up and nearly jumped out of my robot’s titanium shell.
It was another robot. Making circles in the sand.
Impossible.
CHAPTER 6
“Rawling.” My voice sounded mechanical since it traveled through a sound-activated communication device attached to the robot body.
“Tyce. You’re at the telescope. Need more instructions?” Rawling asked.
I swiveled the robot video lens. The part of the telescope that extended from the dome observatory was like a short tube, twice as wide as the robot’s outstretched arms. It rotated on a track railing. Spraying compressed air into the rotational gears would be a simple task.
“No,” I said. “Yes.”
“No? Yes? Make sense, Tyce.”
“No, I do not need instructions on how to clean the gears. Yes, I need advice.”
“On what?”
“I am going to switch one of my lenses to the video screen in the lab. You tell me what you see.”
“Sure.”
I made the switch. I zoomed in even closer and waited for Rawling. What he would see was a robot body like mine but different.
Rawling’s whistle of surprise broke the silence around me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a robot.” His voice, though still calm, was louder in the communication device.
“Me too. And one sleeker than mine.”
The robot body I controlled looked bare bones compared to this new one, whose legs
, arms, and fingers were sheathed with shiny silver, like metallic skin.
“Tyce,” Rawling said into the speakers, “it looks to me like a second-generation robot.”
“My guess too,” I said. I paused. I didn’t want to ask Rawling this question. But I had to do it. “Have you been keeping a secret from me?”
“No,” he said a second later. “And as dome director, I should know about this. Which means someone somewhere has been keeping it secret from both of us.”
“That’s not good, is it?”
Rawling knew what I meant. The former director of the dome, Blaine Steven, had kept too many secrets. I couldn’t forget that the last secret he kept nearly killed Rawling and me and my dad during our expedition across the planet.
“No,” he said, “that’s not good at all.”
“Should I try to catch that robot?” I asked.
“Finish your telescope maintenance and get back down as soon as you can.”
“But—”
“I’ll explain why when you return.”
CHAPTER 7
“Tyce, I’ve pulled up on the computer screen the last 48 hours of activity at the dome entrance.”
We had finished three hours of training on the Hammerhead virtual-reality program, and I now sat in Rawling’s office. “So who moved that other robot out there?” I asked. It would definitely show on the activity record. There was no other way in or out of the dome.
“Look for yourself.” Rawling turned the computer screen my direction.
Digital images of the dome entrance flashed in front of me. It was like entering an igloo with two sealed doors. The outer door remained sealed when the inner door opened. Once the people or cargo moved into the entrance area, the inner door closed and sealed before the outer door opened so oxygen wouldn’t leak out and the dome’s pressure wouldn’t change. It was a 10-minute process and so important that the entrance was under computerized surveillance all the time.
I kept watching the computer screen. In the lower right-hand corner, digital numbers flicked, recording the time. Rawling was fast-forwarding the images so quickly that in less than five minutes, I saw all 48 hours.
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