Death Trap (12 page)

“This early? Where?”

“Places. Maybe I'll tell you later, if I can.”

He frowned. “What's the big secret?”

“Got to go,” I said as I wheeled my way past him. I didn't care if he thought I was rude. After all, he'd been gone for three years. He'd be on Mars for only another few months until the orbit was in position for a return trip to Earth. And now he expected me to drop everything for him?

Not likely.

I had some aliens to catch.

CHAPTER 7

“Ready for those aliens?” Rawling asked, smiling.

“Which one would you like me to go after first?” I asked. “A slimy green one? Or a fat purple one?”

“Help out all earthling kids,” he said. “Get Barney.”

“Huh? Barney?”

“You know, the fat purple one,” Rawling said, then stopped. “Sorry. Forgot you weren't brought up on Earth. You see, there was this television show where … and now I remember. It was a dinosaur … and it had been around forever … but it could have been an alien … and …” Catching my puzzled expression, he shook his head in disgust at himself. “Forget I even mentioned it. We've got serious business ahead of us.”

We did.

As usual for all robot work, we were in the computer lab. As usual, I was on my back on a narrow medical bed, plugged into a receiver for the 100-mile range of X-ray waves.

“Let's go through the checklist,” Rawling said. “I know. I know. We've been through this before,” he said as I rolled my eyes. “But just like flying, safety is the first matter of importance.”

With Rawling I knew better than to argue.

He began pulling straps across my legs to hold me tightly to the bed so I wouldn't accidentally jump and break the connection between the antenna plug in my spine and the receiver across the room.

“First,” Rawling said, “don't allow the robot to have contact with any electrical sources. Ever. Your spinal nerves are attached to the plug. Any electrical current going into or through the robot will scramble the X-ray waves so badly that the signals reaching your own brain may do serious damage.”

Rawling tightened the straps across my stomach and chest. “Second, disengage instantly at the first warning of any damage to the robot's computer drive. Your brain circuits are working so closely with the computer circuits that any harm to the computer may spill over to harm your brain.” He placed a blindfold over my eyes and strapped my head in position.

“Understood and understood,” I said.

“Lastly,” he said, “is the robot battery at full power?”

“Yes. And unplugged from the electrical source that charges it.”

The robot was at the far end of the dome near the entrance. Since the receiver worked at a distance, it wasn't necessary to keep the robot nearby. Before coming to the lab, I'd made sure the robot was ready for use.

“Good, good,” Rawling said, squeezing my shoulder. “Any last questions before I soundproof you?”

“No,” I said confidently.

“You're looking forward to this, aren't you?”

It was dark for me under the blindfold, but I grinned as if I could see Rawling's face. “Big-time,” I said. The robot was a freedom that made up for my crippled body. No one else could wander the planet like I could.

“Then let's go.” He placed a soundproof headset on my ears. The fewer distractions to reach my brain in my real body, the better.

It was dark and silent while I waited for a sensation of entering the robot computer.

My wait did not take long. Soon I began to fall off a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.

I kept falling and falling and falling. …

CHAPTER 8

It never failed to amaze me. As I lay on the bed in the computer lab, light patterns from the other end of the dome entered one of the robot's four video lenses. Translated digitally into electrical impulses, that light followed the electronic circuitry into the robot's computer drive. From there, the electrical impulses were translated into X-ray waves that traveled through the dome to the receiver in the computer lab. From the receiver, the waves beamed to the wires in my jumpsuit, which were connected to the antenna plug in my spine. As the electrical impulses moved up the nerves of my spinal column into my brain, my brain did what it always did when light entered my real eyes and hit the optical nerves that reached into my brain—it translated the light patterns at the far end of the dome into images I could recognize. A similar process also allowed the robot to hear—but through sound waves that reached my own ear canals.

No differently than thinking about moving one of my own arms, I thought about moving the robot arms. And immediately it happened. I brought my titanium hands up in front of a video lens and flexed my fingers, wiggling them to make sure everything worked properly.

That's when the sound waves of a female voice entered the robot speakers and instantly entered my own brain. Actually, it was more like the sound waves of a female scream.

I switched to my rear video lens and saw the image of a female jumping backward. It was her. The girl I had seen last night was standing a few feet away from me. Evidently she'd recovered quickly from the scare of meeting the robot; she now stared with open curiosity.

As a robot, I was about her height. My video lens looked directly into her face. From this close distance, I saw her eyes were brown. She wore tiny silver cross earrings. I rolled my wheels forward a few inches and backward a few inches.

She jumped again.

“Greetings, earthling,” I said. The robot's voice box worked like a telephone. Although it was capable of sounding exactly like my own voice, words tended to come out more mechanically. In speaking to this girl in front of me, I dragged out my words and talked in a nasal tone, just like I'd heard fake robots talk in science fiction movies I'd downloaded onto my computer. I don't know why I decided to do this. It must be because I have a weird sense of humor and she was too new to the dome to know this robot was actually hooked up to a person.

“You can talk?” she said, surprised.

“Yes, earthling. I can do many simple things. I can add two plus two. It equals four. Am I right?” I kept talking in that nasal, fake robot voice.

“Yes!” she said. “What about eight times eight?”

“Sixty-four. Did you not know yourself such simple mathematics?”

“Of course,” she said, folding her arms. “I was just testing you.”

“Testing? What is testing?” I asked. This was fun.

“I guess if you had real brains you'd know, wouldn't you?” she replied smugly.

Ouch. I deserved that.

She stepped closer and looked me up and down. The robot body was ugly, all right, but in her eyes probably better than the crippled body of a kid her age. “What's your name?” she asked, smiling. She tilted her body left and rested her right hand on her right hip.

I had to think quickly. I'd never thought of the robot having a name. I didn't want to give her mine. It might be fun to keep secret as long as possible the fact that I was directing the robot from my real body. “Bruce,” I said, grabbing the first name that came into my mind.

“Bruce?” She smiled again. I liked that smile. “How did you get a name like that?”

“From my mother,” I said in a weird, slow robot voice.
From my mother?
What kind of dumb answer was that? If I had robot legs, I'd have kicked myself.

She laughed. “Ask a dumb question, get a dumb answer. My name is Ashley.” She stuck out her right hand. “It's nice to meet you.”

I shook her hand with my titanium one, careful not to squeeze too hard. “Nice to meet you too.”

“Well, could you give me a tour of the dome?”

I could get to know her as the robot, and she wouldn't have to stare at my crippled body in my wheelchair. That didn't sound too bad. “Later, please, earthling. When I return.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, confusion on her face.

“To save all other earthlings,” I said. “It should not take me long.” I wheeled away and headed toward the dome entrance.

She waved good-bye, giggling—probably at how stupid I was.

CHAPTER 9

I wheeled outside the dome to a Martian sunrise.

I've been told that the sky on Earth is blue and the rising sun is yellow, with clouds around it colored pink, red, and orange. I've also been told that in the middle of the day, clouds are white, or if they hold rain, gray.

Not here on Mars. The sun is blue against a butterscotch-colored sky. Later in the day the sky becomes red as sunlight scatters through dust particles at a different angle. At this hour, wispy blue clouds hung high in the butterscotch sky, but they'd disappear as the day became warmer.

Now, this early, it was cold—about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A 60-mile-an-hour wind hit me, but it didn't have much force because the Martian atmosphere is so thin. Some blowing sand rattled against my titanium shell.

Once out of the dome, I felt free. I didn't have to wear a space suit. The cold and lack of oxygen didn't hurt my robot body. Best of all, my crippled legs no longer mattered. I was able to wheel across hard-packed sand toward the cornfield at the speed of a galloping horse.

Which I did.

Five minutes later, I stopped in front of the huge plasticsheeted greenhouse.

Rawling and I had decided that the first thing I should do was check for holes in the sheeting. The greenhouse was designed to trap sunlight and heat. It was not designed to be sealed against the Martian atmosphere, so we expected that somewhere, along the miles of plastic sheeting, there might be a rip or 2 or 12.

Slowly I made my way around the outside of the greenhouse. I wasn't just looking for rips, though. I was looking for a place where aliens might have entered.

And 15 minutes later, I found it. More correctly speaking, I found tracks.

The hole itself was a couple of feet high and a couple of feet wide. It didn't have the smoothness of a rip. By zooming in with my video lens, I clearly saw scratches, as if a claw had been used to tear the clear plastic sheeting.

The sand below this hole was packed harder than the sand on either side. In the softer sand at the edges of this packed path, a few tracks were visible. The wind had begun to fill in the tracks with drifting sand, but I could still see enough to know the tracks were not my imagination.

They were about the size of the palm of my hand—my real hand, not my robot hand—and about half an inch deep. I could not make out any more details, however, because the sand had drifted.

I did know two things for certain: The tracks were not human. And they led into the cornfield.

I spun back and followed the plastic walls of the greenhouse tent until I reached the same entrance I'd used when rescuing Timothy Neilson. The same entrance he'd taken when he went inside to check the growth levels of the plants, unaware that minutes later he'd be desperately calling for help.

It was much warmer in the greenhouse. Unlike the rest of the planet, there was enough oxygen in here from the plants to hold heat. That, combined with the greenhouse effect and the heat of the soil, made it above freezing. Not that I cared one way or another. I was well protected by my robot body.

I rolled inside, scanning in all directions. As before, the tall bamboo corn blocked my view. While these plants did need some water and the protection of the greenhouse, they practically thrived in the Martian air.

You see, while the atmosphere of Earth is 21 percent oxygen, 78 percent nitrogen, and 1 percent argon and carbon dioxide, the atmosphere of Mars is 95 percent carbon dioxide, 3 percent nitrogen, and 2 percent argon and other gases. Humans breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants do the opposite, which is very handy. So plants give us what we need, and we give them what they need.

Since Mars is already rich in carbon dioxide, the plants only needed water to survive. And since Mars is such a dry planet, the plants were genetically designed to need very little of it. Any moisture they received was sprayed through nozzles from narrow plastic tubing that ran in grids along the ceiling of the greenhouse tent.

Because I could see so little, I followed the rows of bamboo corn to the hole in the plastic sheeting. It didn't help much. On the outside, there was a packed path. On the inside, the path disappeared, as if the alien creatures had scattered in different directions once they had entered.

That left me with too many questions.

Why had they entered?

Where did they go once inside?

Were they still inside?

Where did they go after they left, if indeed they had left the greenhouse?

Where had they come from?

And the most important question of all: Why had they attacked a human?

I wasn't worried about what would happen to me if they attacked my robot body. First of all, my titanium shell was a lot stronger than human skin and bones. Second, even if they were able to somehow damage my robot body, I could leave the robot almost instantly. In my mind, all I needed to do was shout
Stop!

From the greenhouse wall, I decided to push into the bamboo corn and try to follow one set of blurred tracks.

I pushed aside stems of bamboo corn. My wheels rolled over other stems. I switched to my rear video lens and saw I was making a clear path through the plants. It was a straight path, unlike the one Timothy Neilson had made in his panicked run.

I realized something else. My path was the only path.

Yet I was almost certain that some kind of creature had ripped a hole through the plastic sheeting of the greenhouse tent. I was almost certain that many of those creatures had entered the greenhouse tent. But where were the bent and trampled bamboo-corn plants that showed their paths?

The only answer I could come up with was that these creatures were small enough to move among the plant stems instead of plowing over them, like my robot body did.