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  “You are his lifeline,” Dad explained to my puzzled look. “As long as I know you are safe, he is safe. If they send anyone after you, if they stop you in any way—”

  “No need to explain,” the old man interrupted. He hadn’t said a word to this point, and the calm deepness of his voice was a surprise. “If the kids get hurt, I get hurt. The Combat Force commander knows this very clearly. All your conditions have been met. But I warn you now—their deaths will be in your hands.”

  “If anyone in the Combat Force harms them—,” Dad began.

  “It won’t be the Force that kills them, you young fool.”

  I’d never heard anyone speak to my father this way. More surprisingly, Dad accepted the rebuke. Who was this old man?

  “Sending them out into the swamps of the Everglades will kill them as surely as any military command,” the old man went on.

  Everglades?

  “And furthermore, young man,” he told Dad, “exactly how long do you think you can stay awake?”

  Dad didn’t answer. At least not to the old man. “Tyce,” Dad replied, “he’s right. All I can guarantee you for a head start is the length of time that I can sit here. When I fall asleep …”

  He didn’t have to finish that thought. I understood. When Dad fell asleep and the knife fell from his hand, he’d no longer have a hostage.

  “I won’t leave you,” I blurted. “Send Ashley by herself. I’ll help you. We can take turns staying awake and keeping him hostage while she—”

  “Go,” Dad insisted. “Later, when you read the note, you’ll understand.” He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret.

  “No.”

  “You’ll have to trust me,” Dad said gently. “I’m your father.”

  “No,” I said. “I won’t leave you.”

  “You have no choice.”

  Dad lifted his eyes from mine and stared directly into the front video lens of the robot that held me. “Ashley, take him away.”

  The robot began to roll back toward the door, with me still helpless in its arms.

  “No!” I shouted at the robot. “Ashley, let me stay!”

  My desperate plea did no good.

  The last view I had of my father was of him sitting on the bunk. With a solemn expression on his face.

  “You need to succeed, Tyce. You have six days. And the countdown begins now.”

  CHAPTER 4

  With soldiers following, the robot approached the main doors of the Combat Force’s prison.

  I now knew why they had not fired any shots from their neuron rifles. Dad was protecting me by holding that old man hostage. But only for as long as he could remain awake.

  At that instant I hated like I’d never hated before. I hated the fact that I was being carried. I hated the fact that the operation on my spine had left me without the use of my legs. I hated the fact I couldn’t get to my feet and charge back to the prison cell. That I couldn’t help the father I used to dislike and had only recently come to understand. I couldn’t lose him now—especially when he’d also become my friend.

  But I was helpless. As the robot rolled forward I didn’t even bother pleading with Ashley anymore. A few feet later I heard Mom’s voice in my mind. “Tyce, we just have to trust God. Even when things look bad, he’s got everything under control.” She’d said it before, and she’d been right. But what about this time? Although I, too, had come to believe in and trust God, this situation looked impossible. How was God going to fix this?

  Now the doors to the outside loomed in front of me. Despite my anger and fear, I began to feel excitement. Like opening a present on Christmas, except a thousand times stronger.

  It had been night when Dad, Ashley, and I and the rest of the crew of the Moon Racer had been shuttled from orbit to Earth. We had landed at this military base, and the shuttle had coasted into a large warehouse. On the ground we’d been transferred through a chute from the shuttle into an electric vehicle that took us deeper into the base. Finally we’d reached the prison area after a brief time in quarantine. Not once during the process had I seen anything of the Earth’s surface. I had not even gulped one breath of outside air.

  And now?

  When the doors in front of me opened, I’d be somewhere I had dreamed about for years. Ever since understanding that I was the only person in the entire solar system to be born off the planet Earth.

  Yes, I’d be outside, without a space suit. On Earth. Breathing in open air, outside of buildings. For the first time in my life. As the main doors swung open to the outside, I sucked a big lungful of air and held my breath.

  The next instant I lost all that air. For what I saw took my breath away.

  Blue sky!

  Yellow sun!

  White clouds!

  On Mars, the landscape was a butterscotch-colored sky with a blue sun and orange clouds. I’d only ever read or seen on DVD-gigarom how things looked on Earth. This was far more beautiful than I’d ever imagined.

  In that moment, I forgot about my dad. I forgot about the six-day countdown. I forgot about the impossible mission of rescue that Ashley and I faced.

  Blue sky!

  Yellow sun!

  White clouds!

  And heat. Wonderful warmth on my skin. With air moving across me.

  I drew in another lungful of breath—just because it was so sweet to drink in this fresh air.

  The ground was black and smooth in front of me. This was the end of the runway that the shuttle had landed on when we’d been taken here. A few different airplanes—which I recognized from movies I had watched on Mars—were parked at the side of this runway. To my left and to my right were the buildings of the military base, including the large, tall bay that the shuttle had parked in. All of this looked like an island set in the middle of the swamps that surrounded it.

  As the robot rolled closer to the edge of the runway, I was overwhelmed by smells that came with the air I drank in so greedily. I was used to a landscape of frozen brown and red desert, long sucked dry of any hint of moisture. Here? Beyond the parking lot was a wall of green. Tall plants reaching for the sky. Small plants crowding the bases of the large plants. With colorful blossoms that gave incredible smells. Wow! Wow! Wow!

  And noises! The creaking and buzzing and twittering of living things that swarmed in the green plants at the edge of the parking lot.

  This was Earth! How incredible.

  “Tyce? Tyce?” Ashley’s voice broke through.

  “I can hear you,” I finally answered.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Really, it’s okay.”

  I didn’t answer her. I was still trying to comprehend all of this. This is really Earth!

  “We’ll get through this,” Ashley promised through the robot’s speakers. “In less than a week, you’ll see your dad again. We’ll make sure of it.”

  I suddenly realized why she was trying to reassure me. Because I suddenly realized I was crying, and the sound of it must have reached her. She didn’t know I wasn’t crying because of my dad. But because of how beautiful God’s creation was. Earth!

  “A-Ashley,” I stuttered, “I … I …” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t find any words to express what it felt like to be outside, under the blue sky of Earth, for the first time in my life. Instead, I turned my eyes to the sky and thought, Wow, God. Thanks.

  “Hang on,” Ashley said. “I’ll have you with me right away. I’m here. At the edge of the runway. In this boat.”

  I noticed for the first time that the trees in front of me weren’t a solid wall. In the gap, I saw a large boat. With what looked like a giant fan mounted on the back. At the front of it stood a man, his hands on a steering wheel. At the back was a canvas roof propped by four poles, one in each corner.

  “Airboat,” Ashley said, reading the question in my mind. “For riding the top of the shallow water of the Everglades.”

  I remembered what the old man had said in Dad’s prison cell. “Sending them out into the swamps of th
e Everglades will kill them as surely as any military command.”

  We were going out there? Into all those trees and plants and among all those strange noises of all that hidden, buzzing life? On water?

  Suddenly the familiar, barren, frozen desert of the Martian landscape seemed like a very safe home.

  CHAPTER 5

  A heavy rumbling noise came from the airboat’s motor.

  The robot rolled up a ramp onto the boat. Below the ramp was dark water that smelled strange to my accustomed-to-Mars nostrils.

  Water! The boat rested in a channel hundreds of yards long that finally disappeared in the distance among the trees and vegetation.

  I could hardly comprehend so much water out in the open. On Mars, water was as precious as electricity and oxygen, and it was guarded and recycled as if our lives depended on it. Which, of course, they did.

  Yet here was water, in the open, and more of it than I’d seen in my entire life. I might have stopped to stare with an open jaw, but the robot reached the top of the ramp and rolled into the boat.

  The 20 soldiers with the neuron rifles remained at the edge of the parking lot until we had boarded. Then they lowered their rifles and turned to leave, walking in tight formation in their black uniforms.

  The soldier behind the wheel at the front of the boat wore an identical uniform and had the standard, clipped-short hair. His tan face showed no expression. Nor did he say anything.

  I ignored him in return. My attention was on Ashley.

  She sat at the back of the boat, propped by seat cushions to stay upright, since her own body was basically helpless as she controlled the robot. She wore a blindfold and a headset. Around the waist of her military jumpsuit was a robot pack, which is a mini-transmitter. It was the “bot-pack” that made my rescue possible. All my life on Mars, I’d worked in a laboratory under the dome, hooked into a large computer system that was definitely not portable. When Ashley had arrived on Mars, she’d brought the next generation of robot-control technology—the bot-pack, a mobile robot-control package that hung on a belt.

  “Welcome, Martian,” the robot said to me.

  Good old Ashley. Making a joke about my origins. “Hello, earthling,” I fired back.

  It was weird. Ashley was only a couple of steps away from me, under the shade of the canvas roof. Yet she wasn’t seeing me with her eyes but through the robot’s video lenses. She didn’t speak to me with her voice but through the robot’s speakers. Only after she disengaged from the robot would the reverse happen. The robot would become lifeless, and then Ashley would use her own body to see me and talk to me.

  “Don’t think being so friendly is going to help,” I said. “That’s my father you made me leave behind in there. I—”

  “You need to get into your wheelchair,” she interrupted. “It’s an older model but all they could come up with here on short notice. Once you’re in it, you can yell at me all you want.”

  A wheelchair was parked beside Ashley. Not the one I’d taken with me from Mars but a bigger one, with an electric motor. Another full-size robot stood beside it. A bot-pack hung from the left handle of the wheelchair. A backpack hung from the other handle.

  “No,” I said stubbornly. “Once I get into the wheelchair, this boat will leave, won’t it? And my father will be by himself.”

  “In two more minutes when I get a chance to talk to you,” Ashley reasoned through the robot’s speakers, “all of this will be clear. Let me disengage from the robot, so I can explain to you what I know. Your dad’s note will do the rest. But I don’t want to treat you like a baby and force you into the wheelchair. Please?”

  Finally I nodded.

  The robot moved the extra few feet to the wheelchair and gently lowered me into place. The boat rocked in the water at the shifting of our weight.

  “All right,” I said as the robot backed away. “I’m ready.”

  The robot parked itself beside the other robot. It lowered its arms. Shutters dropped to protect the video lenses. I knew what Ashley was doing because of the countless times I had done it myself. Disengaging from the robot controls by shouting “Stop!” in her mind.

  A second later Ashley pulled off her headset and blindfold. She blinked against the brightness of the sun and pushed back her straight, black hair. The sun highlighted her cheekbones, beautiful dark eyes, and Asian features. When Ashley grinned, she looked her age. But when she frowned, people stepped back. She appeared grown-up enough to be intimidating.

  This time she neither grinned nor frowned but gave me a gentle smile. “Hey, Tyce. It’s good to see you.”

  It was good to see her too. But I was still mad enough that I didn’t want to say it.

  Before I could think of something else to say instead, she raised her voice and spoke to the soldier at the front of the boat. “We’re ready. Take us away.”

  The motor roared, the giant fan blades began to whir, and we shot forward in the water.

  CHAPTER 6

  In one way, Ashley was immediately wrong.

  Despite her promise, she wasn’t able to tell me much in the next two minutes. Not with the roar of the motor and the fan blades. Wind whipped my face and my hair, a sensation I loved. I had never felt anything like it.

  The boat rocked and shook as it sped down the flat water of the channel.

  Ashley squatted beside me and moved her face close to my ear. “Like I said before, most boats have propellers! But that would never get us through the Everglades. We’ll have to put up with the noise for a couple of hours!”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the western edge of the Everglades. They’ve arranged for a helicopter to take us from there.”

  “Why not just have the helicopter pick us up at the base,” I yelled back.

  “Good question,” she answered. “I’ve wondered myself.”

  “What if we get lost?” I shouted. It had taken less than 30 seconds for the channel to take us deep into the thick vegetation. It was as if the Combat Force base no longer existed.

  “GPS,” she said. “Same as on Mars.”

  I nodded. Satellites that orbited Mars fed signals to handheld global positioning units, making it possible to pinpoint your location on a grid of the planet.

  The boat swung violently to make a turn. I clutched the arms of my wheelchair. I was glad someone had tied it to the side to keep it from rolling.

  Ashley toppled over. When she recovered, she squatted beside me again. “I’m going to sit at the side of the boat. In the meantime, read your dad’s note.”

  Instead of shouting again, I simply nodded.

  I reached into my pocket, opened the note, and began to read.

  Tyce,

  There is much that confuses me about all of this. What I can guess comes from the questions I was asked by Combat Force officials since we landed on Earth. It seems that although Dr. Jordan is high up in Combat Force command, no one in the World United Federation government or the Combat Force knew about Dr. Jordan’s project with Ashley and the others. It appears, as a secret agent for the rebel force Terratakers, he has run this project without authorization. Nor, somehow, does anyone know about the recent events on Mars, including the hostage taking under the dome or the Hammerhead testing. It’s as if all communications from Mars to Earth over the last eight months were silenced without the knowledge of anyone on Mars. My guess is that Luke Daab controlled all communications by computer, just as he did on the Moon Racer.

  Dr. Jordan’s last communication from the Moon Racer was that we had abandoned him in outer space to kill him. He wanted it to look like he was dead and at the same time cast suspicion on us. That was the reason we were initially arrested.

  I have said nothing about him surviving, simply because I didn’t know if I could trust anybody, not until finally talking with the supreme governor. I’m now glad I said so little to the Combat Force people here.

  Because of the robots on our ship and the other equipment, they are very cur
ious about you and Ashley. Two of the highest generals in the Combat Force are scheduled to arrive this afternoon to oversee experiments on you and Ashley. It was imperative that you both escape before that happened. Once they understand what you are capable of doing, they will want to use you in the same ways that Dr. Jordan intended. As military weapons.

  Also, you know Dr. Jordan ejected from the Moon Racer in an escape pod. At this point, he has no reason to think his plan to destroy the Moon Racer failed. As you also know, he has already arrived, but as far as I can tell, he has kept this hidden from his Combat Force connections. It wasn’t until meeting with the supreme governor that I learned what he has been doing since reaching Earth and what he intends.

  This is the second reason you and Ashley needed to escape immediately. Once Jordan knows you are still alive, he will try to capture you, and failing that, send someone to kill you. I’m sure Jordan would prefer to see you dead than let the World United Federation truly understand the scope of his project. After all, he still has the other kids under his control—for as long as the Federation does not discover their existence.

  No one on an official level in the Federation or the Combat Force knows about Dr. Jordan and the others except you and me and Ashley. When the generals arrive, I am sure they will ask me about you two, especially after Ashley demonstrated her control of a robot by rescuing you. They will not, however, have any reason to suspect there are others. Or that I know there are others.

  You and Ashley, then, must keep their existence secret as you try to find a way to stop Dr. Jordan. Trust no one unless they prove I have sent them. You must also reach the other kids before Dr. Jordan or the Combat Force does. If possible, get them to a place where the media can report them. Once the world knows of them, they will no longer be considered a secret weapon. And they, along with you, will finally be safe. Once that happens, the Combat Force will have no reason to keep me prisoner.

  If you don’t have time to reach the media, you need to find a way to stop Dr. Jordan. I can’t stress this enough. Stop him even if it means my death.