Ambush (8 page)
“We're going to my office,” he snarled. “If it's on you anywhere, my scanner will find it. And if it's not there, I'll find a way to make you talk.”
From the ant-bot's perspective, it was a strange, strange world.
The walk from the power plant to Dr. Jordan's office wasn't a walk for me. I was a hitchhiker, hidden beneath Ashley's wristband. It felt like I was on the end of a giant pendulum, slowly swinging back and forth with the movement of her arm. Every few seconds I'd jab her skin as hard as I could, hoping she'd feel it and know I was still with her.
“Let go of my arm!” she told Dr. Jordan.
“Not likely,” he said. “Don't waste your breath.”
Dr. Jordan might have thought she'd wasted her breath, but I knew it was Ashley's way of telling me what was happening.
Neither of them spoke for a while after that.
This late at night, even if the scientists and techies weren't being held hostage in the meeting room, the dome was usually very still. The fabric of Ashley's jumpsuit muffled whatever other sounds were there, like the fans and the hum of the dome's power plant.
Altogether it was a weird experience.
I might have enjoyed it, but I was desperately thinking of what to do once we got to Dr. Jordan's office.
The first thing, obviously, was to get away from Ashley. All Dr. Jordan needed to do was sweep a scanner in the air within a couple of feet of Ashley, and it would give him a
beep-beep-beep
confirmation of the ant-bot's location.
But how could I get away?
The jump would certainly smash the ant-bot. After all, it would be no different than taking my regular-size robot body and leaping off a cliff over half a mile high.
I doubted I'd be able to crawl up her arm and then down her entire body to the floor in enough time.
So I'd have to depend on Ashley. Which was why I kept jabbing her wrist to remind her exactly where I was.
I shouldn't have worried for even a second.
As soon as Dr. Jordan pushed her into his office, she hit the light switch. The diffused, bluish light that made it through the fabric of her jumpsuit became totally black.
“Let go!” she shouted. “Let go!”
Again my world became swirling, rocking, confusing. I had a sensation of falling, which stopped instantly a heartbeat later. What was happening?
“You tripped me!” Ashley shouted. “I think I broke my wrist when it hit the floor.”
She means that for me. To let me know the floor is nearby.
“Get up, you stupid girl.”
I propelled the ant-bot forward and fell again, very briefly.
Floor!
It was still dark. I didn't know what direction I was headed, but I moved as fast as the tiny robot wheels would let me.
Seconds later the light snapped on again.
My video lens caught movement, and instinctively I spun hard right.
Something gigantic came down, thudding to the floor with vibrations that wobbled me. A short gust of air blew me forward.
I'd just missed being squashed by Dr. Jordan's foot! It would have destroyed the ant-bot's computer without warning and probably scrambled my own brain circuits.
I wheeled as hard as I could toward the nearest wall, which seemed like a vertical cliff miles high. When I reached the base, I found plenty of room beneath the baseboard to hide.
I waited.
“Please don't tape my wrists to this chair,” Ashley said.
“Shut your mouth. No amount of begging will stop me.”
Again, Ashley was trying to help me by letting me know what was happening. She was one gutsy girl.
She and Dr. Jordan were in the center of the room. But what could I do to help?
“Hey,” Ashley said, “why is the satellite feed hooked up to your computer? Isn't that supposed to be in the director's office?”
“You have too many questions.”
“Does this mean you're the only one who can contact Earth?” she asked. “That's the only satellite feed under the dome, isn't it?”
“Silence!” Dr. Jordan barked.
Ashley knew Dr. Jordan would get mad. So why had she talked about the satellite feed twice?
I answered my own question by remembering what she'd told me earlier. “
If the prisoners on Earth aren't freed within another hour, Dr. Jordan is going to execute a scientist here under the dome. He's going to send live video coverage of the execution by satellite feed, so the media will get it and broadcast it across Earthâ¦. He believes public pressure will make the Federation do what he wants.”
One hour left before the first execution.
Ashley was trying to tell me that the only way of reaching Earth was through the satellite feed here in this office.
Which meant if I could destroy the satellite feed, Dr. Jordan would have to wait before executing anyone.
But that was a big, big
if
for a small, small ant-botâ¦.
I followed the base of the wall at full speed, reached a corner, and kept going as fast as I could in the new direction.
In a full-size body, it would have taken only three steps to reach the desk on the other side of Dr. Jordan's office. In the ant-bot, it seemed like half a mile. By the time I completed the journey, Dr. Jordan had returned with the scanner to search Ashley.
Although from my perspective it was too far to see into the middle of the room, I knew the scanner was not much different from the metal detector wands I'd seen in movies.
“After this,” I heard Ashley ask, “what next? How do you get back to Earth? How do you know you won't be arrested?”
Computer cables hung from the desk, falling in loose coils on the floor. To me the cables looked like massive tree trunks, with the surface rough enough for me to climb them. So I reached up with one of the ant-bot's tiny arms and began climbing.
“How are you going to get away with this?” Ashley persisted. “I thought you were much smarter.”
Arm over arm, I pulled myself upward. Rawling had once trained me for this in my regular-size robot.
I guessed Ashley was asking Dr. Jordan questions to distract him. She didn't know what I was doing, but I'm sure she wanted to delay him.
“I mean,” she continued, “you can't stay on Mars forever. And you'll be arrested as soon as you step off the shuttle.”
I kept climbing. I didn't expect Dr. Jordan to respond.
But he did. I guessed he was probably too vain to want a girl Ashley's age to think he was stupid.
“There's plenty of places I can hide on the Moon-base,” he said. “And that's where the shuttle will make an unexpected stop. From the moon, I can take any number of daily flights back down to Earth.”
The Moon-base,
I thought. It had been established 10 years before the Mars Project. With short shuttles making it easy to deliver supplies and work parties, it now covered the size of a city, while the base on Mars was still little more than the original dome.
I heard the
beep-beep-beep
of the scanner. I was three-quarters of the way up the cable.
“Aha,” Dr. Jordan said. “Hidden in your hair!”
“That's a hair clip,” Ashley said. “I can save you the trouble. I don't have the ant-bot.”
“Nice try,” he replied.
I reached the top of the cable. The ant-bot wasn't tired, of course, because robots never tire. They run until the power pack is depleted. I hoped that either a robot this small was very efficient or that Ashley had charged the power pack recently.
“Told you,” Ashley said. “Hair clip.”
That let me imagine the scene in the center of the room. If her arms were taped to the armrest of a chair, Dr. Jordan would be leaning over her, disappointed to find only a hair clip.
I scurried across the desk in the shadow of the computer. It was like walking along the bottom of a massive building.
The scanner beeped again.
“Another hair clip,” Ashley said.
I ran beneath the shell of the computer. It was much dimmer, but I could look up and get enough light through the tiny cooling vents. There was a gap in the underside of the computer shell. It would allow me to climb into the computer, except the underside was too high for me to reach. Like a person standing beneath a ceiling.
And even if I got in there, what could I do to short-circuit it?
That's when I realized I had asked exactly the right question.
Short-circuit.
Safely hidden, I surveyed the top of Dr. Jordan's desk. There was a pen, looking like a log to me. And a paper clip.
The pen was almost right beside the computer. I scampered out and pushed one end. I felt very much like an ant as half of the pen slowly rolled beneath the computer.
“How do you know that someone else didn't take the ant-bot?” Ashley asked from the center of the room, her voice echoing weirdly. “Because I can tell you that I don't have it.”
“No one else but you or the wheelchair kid can use it.”
“What if someone decided to use it as proof of the existence of your secret military program? What if the right people on Earth somehow found out that you've taken billions and billions from government programs?”
I heard the sound of a slap.
“Is that what you do when you don't have a good answer?” Ashley asked. “Hit people? Like that proves you right?”
Ashley could only be doing this to distract him. Maybe she'd seen over his shoulder and noticed my little movements on the desk. If that was true, I didn't have much time. I scrambled back from the edge of the bottom of the computer and went for the paper clip. I wrestled with it and managed to drag it under the computer.
“Tell me where you've hidden Project 3,” Dr. Jordan hissed.
I lifted the paper clip, balancing it on end. Twice it nearly fell. But I managed to push it up into the gap. It leaned against the edge of the gap, and I was able to climb onto the pen. One big shove and the paper clip fell into the base of the computer.
“There's nothing you can do to me,” Ashley said with determined defiance.
“Really?” Dr. Jordan asked.
With one hand I was able to grab the edge of the gap and pull myself up. With the other hand I pushed and let the ant-bot topple inside. I was now in the guts of the computer, armed with a paper clip.
I froze as I heard Dr. Jordan's next words.
“Fine,” he said to Ashley. “You'll talk when I bring the wheelchair kid in here and show you how painful I can make life for him.”
“Tyce? How can you hurt Tyce?”
I frantically wrestled the paper clip.
“Very easily. See you in a minute.” He laughed cruelly.
“Sit tight while I'm gone.”
I heard the door shut behind him.
“Tyce?” Ashley called out frantically a few seconds later. “Did you hear that? You need to leave the ant-bot!”
I was too busy with the paper clip to answer.
I opened my eyes in the darkness of the storage room.
How long before Dr. Jordan arrives from his office on the other side of the dome?
I didn't waste any time. First I reached behind me and disconnected the transmitter from my neck. I dropped it down the back of my jumpsuit again. All I could do was hope Dr. Jordan didn't decide to search me again. But there was no point in trying to dump it. Without the transmitter, Ashley and I had no chance at all.
Seconds later the door opened without warning. It was Dr. Jordan. With the security guard beside him.
“Take him,” Dr. Jordan commanded. “And follow me to my office.”
“It's very simple, Ashley.” Dr. Jordan paced back and forth in front of both of us. He had taken me into his office and sent the security guard back to help watch the other hostages. Ashley was still in her chair, taped by the arms to the armrests. I was in my wheelchair, helpless as always. “You tell me where you've hidden Project 3, or your friend Tyce becomes the first hostage to be executed.”
Dr. Jordan pointed at the satellite feed attached to his computer. “It will make for a spectacular news storyâdon't you think? People will be riveted to their 3-D sets for television history. He's young, he's in a wheelchair, and not only was he the first person born on Mars, he'll be the first to die on Mars.”
Ashley turned her head and stared at me. Her face twisted with horror and dread.
“No,” I said. “You can't tell him.”
“Best of all, Ashley,” Dr. Jordan continued, “you'll be right here watching it live.”
Dr. Jordan moved to his desk and picked up a neuron gun. He pointed it at my wrist, which rested on the armrest of my wheelchair.
Then he smiled and squeezed the trigger.
There was no sound, nothing for the eye to see. But the electrical impulses hit me instantly, disabling the nerve endings of my left wrist and hand.
I couldn't help myself. I lifted my other arm and yelled.