Oxygen Level Zero Mission 2 Read online

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  Copyright © 2000 by Sigmund Brouwer. All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration copyright © 2000 by William K. Hartman. All rights reserved.

  Designed by Justin Ahrens

  Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.

  ISBN 0-8423-6141-3 (lit)

  ISBN 0-8423-6144-8 (pdb)

  ISBN 0-8423-6143-X (pdf)

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  This series is dedicated in memory of Martyn Godfrey.

  Martyn, you wrote books that reached all of us kids at

  heart. You wrote them because you really cared.

  We all miss you.

  &+$37(5

  Ahead of me, somewhere in the jungle of tall, green bamboo-corn, a man’s life depended on how quickly I could reach him.

  This was no virtual-reality computer simulation program, like the ones I’d practiced for years in the science lab. It was the real thing. I’d been given so little time to get ready that all I knew were the basic facts about my mission.

  The man’s name was Timothy Neilson. He was a high-level

  medical tekkie—a technician who helped the scientists carry out their experiments. His job was to tend what we under the Mars Dome called the “cornfield,” a large patch located in a greenhouse outside the dome. Neilson’s emergency beeper had gone off fifteen minutes earlier, and it was a good thing I had already been in a practice rescue session, hooked up to the robot I was now controlling. That meant I could roll into action immediately. But I didn’t know if that was fast enough. Timothy Neilson wasn’t responding to radio communications, even though the computer link showed that his receiver and transmitter were both in perfect working order.

  I knew one other thing about Timothy Neilson.

  The emergency signal reaching the dome from a computer chip embedded in his space suit told us the suit was leaking oxygen and heat so badly that he now had less than ten minutes to live. If he was still alive.

  The gigantic black shell of the dome was five minutes behind me across a stretch of hard-packed, red desert sand. That meant I’d have to find Timothy Neilson in five minutes and get him back to the dome in the remaining five minutes.

  Two things would help me. First, I held a global positioning unit (g.p.u.) that allowed me to track the location of the signal chip in his space suit. Also, as I neared his body, I could switch to infrared vision and look for the heat escaping his space suit.

  Even with the g.p.u. and infrared to help me, however, I was in trouble because of the bamboo-corn stretching high in all directions around me.

  Although this was Mars, the stuff around me truly was as thick as any jungle. My mother is one of the scientists who has worked hard for fourteen years to genetically alter Earth plants that might survive on the surface of Mars. None can—so far—but these hybrids had come the closest. The stems of the plants were tall and thin and strong like bamboo plants, with wide, long leaves like those of corn plants. The entire field—a half-mile square of rows and rows of bamboo-corn—was enclosed by a huge greenhouse tent of clear, space-tech plastic sheeting that gave the plants the protection they needed to survive. With 100-mile-an-hour sandstorms that covered half the planet and an average temperature of minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit, life on Mars wasn’t easy. But the next generation of these plants, my mom believed, would be able to grow without the greenhouse. In addition to the oxygen given off by the plants, the Mars Project would begin pumping oxygen into the atmosphere. Eventually, scientists hoped humans would be able to live on Mars without being under the protection of the dome. And that would help solve one of Earth’s problems in the twenty-first century—overcrowding.

  I was somewhere in the middle of this field, with four minutes now remaining to find Timothy Neilson.

  Using my robot wheels, I rolled down a path between two rows of bamboo-corn. The leaves tickled like silk against my titanium shell. Above the rustling of those leaves, I heard the whistling of Martian wind as it found tiny gaps in the greenhouse tent. Unlike the dome, this wasn’t sealed perfectly. It didn’t need to be; the plan was to see if these plants could thrive with only some protection. If they lived, their seeds would be cross-bred and genetically changed again to make the next generation even hardier. I listened as the wind whistled and sand rattled against the plastic. . . .

  No!

  I told myself I did not hear what I thought I was hearing: movement in the corn leaves, just out of sight. Like the noise of

  dozens of creatures slipping away among the stalks of bamboo-corn.

  I swiveled the robot body, scanning around me. But only the silent, tall green stems surrounded me like prison bars.

  Then I saw a darting movement. But it came and went so

  quickly, I told myself it was just my imagination. Aliens, I told myself firmly, do not exist.

  I pushed forward, wondering if those nonexistent creatures were about to attack me.

  My g.p.u. chirped. Loudly. I would have jumped if I hadn’t been on wheels. It chirped louder and louder, telling me I was getting close to Neilson.

  Suddenly I came to broken plants, pushed over and sideways as if a man had crashed into them at a full run. I swerved and followed the crooked path.

  It was easy to see footprints in the soil where the weight of the man’s feet had crushed the wide leaves at the base of the stems. I rolled forward. It was like tracking an animal that had run in full panic, not caring what it hit as it fled.

  As I followed a twisting path through the bamboo-corn, I had no choice but to believe something I did not want to believe.

  Someone—or something—had chased Timothy Neilson.

  Impossible, I told myself again. This was Mars. The scientists claimed there was nothing alive on this planet that could hurt us.

  And aliens simply did not exist.

  I quickly scanned in all directions, but the bamboo-corn made it impossible to see beyond the reach of my titanium arms.

  I switched to infrared vision, which let me see heat instead of light. The green outlines of the stems
and leaves against the pink light of the Mars sky disappeared. In infrared vision, I saw a blur of warm orange (the plants) standing on a deeper, brighter orange (the warmer sun-soaked soil), surrounded by a very light orange color (the cooler air).

  Beyond the warm orange of the plants, I tried to sense the red shapes of living creatures.

  Then I told myself I was dumb. Even if aliens did exist, which I knew was impossible, why should I expect them to have the same kind of body heat as humans?

  The chirping of the g.p.u. guided me forward. I rushed as quickly as I could.

  Seconds later, my infrared located the red outline of a space suit that was bleeding body heat.

  Timothy Neilson.

  “Are you all right?” I asked in my deep robot voice.

  No answer.

  I switched back to normal vision and focused on the white fabric of his space suit. He was lying on his stomach, his legs twisted beneath him where he had fallen in the middle of the bamboo-corn. His space helmet was hidden by the leaves of plants that had fallen on top of him.

  I scooped him into my arms, grateful for the strength of titanium limbs. Without hesitation, I wheeled back toward the dome.

  I now had six minutes and twenty-five seconds to get Timothy Neilson to medical help. If he was still alive. If I wasn’t attacked by whatever had attacked him.

  Because if I could trust my eyes, it looked like teeth and claws had ripped the holes in his space suit.

  &+$37(5

  “How is he?” I asked Rawling McTigre. Of anyone under the dome, he was my best friend. He was a mixture of father and buddy and teacher. I always felt I could ask him about anything, and I knew he’d treat my question with respect and honesty.

  I was now disconnected from my robot body and back in my wheelchair, trapped by my useless legs. I sat in front of Rawling’s desk in his new office. Until recently, the Mars Project director’s office had belonged to someone else—the now ex-director Blaine Steven. He’d just lost his job because he’d nearly gotten 180

  people killed (it’s in my first diary). Now he was under guard in a small lab until the return ship could take him back to Earth. I’ll bet Steven missed his nice office. Its walls displayed framed paintings of Earth scenes like sunsets and mountains. No bookshelves though. Cargo was too expensive. If people wanted books, they read them on CD-ROM.

  “All Neilson’s vital signs are fine,” Rawling said in answer to my question. “The med teks tell me he’s in a coma. He landed hard on his head and gave himself a concussion. If he comes out of it—“

  Rawling stopped himself and sighed. “When he comes out of it, they expect he won’t suffer any permanent brain damage from lack of oxygen. It looks like you got him back in time.”

  “Good,” I said.

  Rawling studied me with curiosity on his face. He had been a quarterback at his university back on Earth when he was younger, and his wide shoulders showed it. His short, dark hair was streaked with gray. He was one of two medical doctors under the dome, and he had recently been appointed replacement director of the Project.

  It might sound strange to say this, but even though he was in his mid-forties and I was only fourteen (in Earth years), Rawling was my best friend. Yet I was the only kid out of two hundred people here, so I didn’t expect friends my age. Also, Rawling had worked with me for hours every day ever since I was eight years old,

  training me in a virtual-reality program that taught me how to control a robot body as if it were my own.

  “All right, Tyce Sanders,” he finally said after watching my face. “I want to hear all of it.”

  I should have known he’d figure out I’d kept something secret.

  Best friend or not, Rawling knew me almost better than anyone else, including my own father, whom I only saw every three years since he was an interplanetary space pilot.

  “How did you guess?” I asked.

  “It wasn’t a guess,” Rawling said dryly. “A man doesn’t rip his own space suit to shreds. Maybe falling down a cliff with jagged rocks would have done it. But it couldn’t have happened out there alone in the cornfield. There has to be more to it than what you told the med teks.”

  “I told the med teks the truth about what I saw,” I said. “But what I didn’t say is that I wonder if he really was alone.”

  Rawling raised an eyebrow.

  I described everything I could to him. The twisted, crooked path that Timothy Neilson had crashed through in the bamboo-corn. The big stretches between footsteps that showed he’d been running. And the sounds of creatures scampering among the leaves.

  “That makes sense,” Rawling said. “I don’t want to believe it, but it makes sense.”

  Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow. I was getting better at it. I’d sit in front of a mirror and work on raising one eyebrow, then the other. I practiced it because I liked the way it looked when Rawling did it.

  “It makes sense?” I asked.

  “I’ll explain in a minute,” Rawling said. “First, tell me why you decided not to tell the med teks.”

  “You’re the director,” I stated bluntly. “If there is something out there, I figured you should be the one to decide whether you want anyone else under the dome to know about it—in case people start to panic.”

  “From worrying about an alien attack?” Rawling queried.

  “That would be big news for all of us,” I responded.

  “Wondering what was out there and waiting. I mean, you saw what happened to Timothy Neilson’s space suit.”

  “Just his space suit, right?” Rawling asked. “I know what the med teks told me, but I want to hear it straight from you.”

  All of a sudden I realized Rawling was talking as if there actually were aliens. Goosebumps chilled my neck.

  “His body looked fine to me,” I said. “So if they only hurt his space suit, maybe I showed up before they could finish the attack.”

  I stopped and thought about what I’d said. “Whatever they are.”

  Rawling began to fiddle with a pencil on his desk. He spun it several times and spoke as he stared at it. “To find out there is other life in the universe beside life on Earth would be one of the most incredible discoveries in scientific history. Then to find out that this alien life-form will attack humans . . .”

  He spun the pencil a few more times.

  “Tyce, you know our last director kept too many secrets from people under the dome.”

  I nodded. Those secrets were another part of why ex-director Steven was heading for Earth on the next spaceship leaving Mars.

  “Wrong as he was to decide who should live and who should die when the dome was running out of oxygen,” Rawling

  continued, “he has some of my sympathy. Sitting behind this desk is not easy. Neither are some of the decisions.” Rawling rubbed his face. “Conditions back on Earth are not the greatest. Because of overpopulation, governments are barely maintaining control as everyone fights for water and other resources.”

  “Yes,” I said. I wondered why he was telling me something I already knew. Something everybody on Earth knew, too. Our presence on Mars was part of a long-term plan. Phase 1 had been to establish the dome. Phase 2, which we had just started, was to grow plant hybrids outside the dome so that more oxygen could be added to the atmosphere. The long-range plan—which could take over a hundred years—was to make the entire planet a place for humans to live outside the dome.

  People on Earth desperately needed the room. Already the planet had too few resources for the many people on it. If Mars could be made a new colony, then Earth could start shipping people here to live. If not, new wars might begin, and millions and millions of people would die from war or starvation or disease.

  “What I’m saying,” Rawling told me, his voice heavy, “is that if news of aliens—especially aliens that attack humans—reaches Earth, it might cause riots.”

  “I understand that,” I said. I had never been to Earth myself, but I knew a lot abo
ut it from DVD-gigarom books. “Are you telling me there are aliens, and you’ve kept it a secret?”

  “I’m telling you that if I do keep it a secret, people here might get hurt. If I keep it a secret, I’m doing exactly what the former director did. And I don’t know if that’s right.”

  He sighed again. “But on the other hand, if I call an assembly and tell everyone what I know, eventually word will get back to Earth and billions of people may panic. . . .”

  I cleared my throat. “What exactly do you know?”

  Rawling didn’t answer. Instead, he flicked on his computer.

  The monitor on the edge of his desk lit up. I saw the cursor move across the screen.

  “Here’s why what you told me makes sense,” Rawling said, opening a file.

  It wasn’t a text file or a video file, but an audio file. A short clip of excited shouting.

  I didn’t hear it right the first time. Or at least, I didn’t want to believe I had heard it right.

  “That voice belongs to Timothy Neilson,” Rawling said. “It’s his last radio communication back to the base. I’ve ordered the radio operator to keep it quiet until I can figure out what to do about it.”

  Rawling replayed the audio clip for me.

  “Help!” a terrified voice shouted from the computer. It was Timothy Neilson’s voice. “Help! They’re chasing me! Dozens of them! Help me! Help me! Help—“

  All that followed those words of panic was static.

  I stared at Rawling. Rawling stared at me.

  “To make matters worse,” Rawling said, “we’re expecting the spaceship late tonight, with dozens of newcomers to the base.”

  &+$37(5

  Some of you on Earth might already know about me.

  I’m the kid on Mars who was writing a diary about

  the final days under the dome, when it looked like

  everyone here would die. (See Mission #1: Oxygen

  Level Zero for that adventure.)

  Even if you didn’t read the long e-book of that

  diary sent by satellite back to Earth, you can