Oxygen Level Zero Mission 2 Read online

  “But small enough to fit in your hand.”

  “Not really,” I said. I had seen photos of people holding cats and dogs, so I had an idea of the size of those animals. “Bigger than a cat. I caught it under the front legs. Most of the body is hanging out of my hand.”

  “Alive?”

  “Yes. But not really doing much. I think it’s close to dead.”

  “Unbelievable,” Rawling said. He drew a sharp breath, then let it out with a whistle.

  “Believe it. That’s why I’m back. I didn’t know if you wanted me to bring it to the dome or not. I didn’t want to do anything until I’d talked to you about it.”

  “Yes, bring it back,” he said. A second later, he shook his head.

  “No. It might die in dome air if it’s not used to breathing oxygen.”

  Rawling began to pace the room. “And what if it’s carrying alien viruses or alien bacteria? If we bring it into the dome, who knows what damage those viruses could do to human bodies?

  Especially human bodies in a closed space like this.”

  He paced more. “But if it’s close to dying, we need to try to save it. Do you have any idea what it would mean to science to be able to examine a living alien life-form?”

  “How about if you drive a platform buggy out to the

  cornfield?” I asked. “Wear a space suit, and let all the oxygen out of the platform dome. I’ll bring the alien out to you and you can examine it in the platform buggy.”

  Rawling stopped pacing. “Brilliant. Very brilliant,” he said excitedly. “I’ll take Jim Harrington with me. He’s the best scientist we have in genetics.”

  With Rawling’s praise, I felt proud—like he was my father. It was too bad my father and I couldn’t talk like this.

  “One other thing before you put me back in the robot body,” I told Rawling.

  “What’s that?”

  “When you leave the dome in the platform buggy, make sure you take some water for our little friend.”

  “Water?”

  “Yes. Where I was standing was right below a sprinkler. I don’t think those creatures were attacking me. I think they wanted water.

  When they heard the clicking of the automatic timer, they knew the sprinklers were about to start. I think they wanted to get at the water in that little gully before it evaporated.”

  &+$37(5

  I opened my eyes again in the robot body. The little koala- bear alien was still in my right hand.

  I rolled away from the gully and began wheeling toward the entrance of the greenhouse.

  I stopped. Had I heard correctly? I turned up my hearing.

  Yes. It was a mewing sound, coming from the little alien in my hand. I lifted it and looked directly into its large, brown eyes. With its last energy, it was trying to call out.

  I heard another mewing sound answer from somewhere in the bamboo-corn nearby.

  My visual only showed thick green leaves, so I switched to infrared.

  There it was! A glowing red shape, maybe ten feet away, the size of the alien in my hand.

  It was calling to the alien I was taking away.

  I switched back to visual. The alien’s large dark eyes made me feel sorry for it. I reminded myself that these creatures had attacked Timothy Neilson and ripped his space suit to shreds.

  It mewed again.

  “Sorry, little guy,” I said in a soft voice. “I do not have much choice. We will get you some water and maybe you will feel better.”

  Was it my imagination? It perked up at the sound of my voice.

  I began to wheel toward the entrance again. The mewing

  behind me grew louder, and it followed me to the edge of the bamboo-corn.

  At the entrance, I switched to the rear lens and looked for the other alien. It stayed hidden as I left the greenhouse, but the mewing grew louder, as if the creature was saying good-bye to the alien I’d captured.

  Great, I said to myself. Now I am a galactic bully.

  I turned my focus ahead, toward the dome. The sky had turned from early-morning butterscotch to a reddish-pink. The sun was a

  dark blue. The wind had dropped, and the temperature had risen. It was a great day to be outside on Mars in a robot body. A great day, that is, for sight-seeing.

  But I had other duties.

  In the empty space of Martian sand between the dome and the greenhouse, I saw the platform buggy on its giant wheels, racing toward me.

  I headed forward to meet it.

  As it got closer, I saw two men in space suits. I couldn’t see their faces behind the dark visors, of course, but I guessed it was Rawling McTigre and Jim Harrington.

  Dust sprayed me and the little alien as the monstrous vehicle lurched to a stop in front of me.

  One of the space-suited men stepped out of the small, clear dome on top of the platform. He carried a Plexiglas cage in one hand and held the railing with the other as he climbed down the ladder.

  When he dropped lightly on the ground, he opened the cage without saying a single word of greeting. His visor was as dark as sunglasses, and I couldn’t see his face.

  “Rawling?” I queried.

  Still silent, the man extended the cage toward me.

  “Dr. Harrington?”

  No reply.

  The man in the space suit just pointed at the empty cage.

  I obeyed his unspoken command and gently put the alien

  inside.

  The man turned around and began climbing up the ladder.

  “Is Rawling with you?” I shouted. “Can you tell me what is happening?”

  The man ignored me and continued his ascent. Seconds later he entered the platform buggy’s dome. And seconds after that, the platform buggy jerked forward, turned, and sped back toward the dome.

  Strange. Very strange.

  It looked like I was no longer part of this. Even if it did look as if I’d discovered the first alien life-form known to humankind.

  &+$37(5

  When I woke up on the bed in the computer lab, I was alone.

  At least, I think I was alone.

  Because I was blindfolded and wearing the soundproof headset, I had no way of knowing if anyone else was in the room. And because I was strapped to the bed, I couldn’t move my hands to lift away the blindfold.

  “Hello?” I called out into the dark silence. “Rawling?

  Anyone?”

  I waited.

  Nothing.

  Five minutes later, still nothing. I was glad I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.

  Another five minutes, still nothing.

  I shouted. “Rawling! Anyone!”

  This was not fun. I had parked the robot body in a dry part of the greenhouse and given the stop command to return to my body on this bed. Now I felt like a prisoner.

  “Rawling! Anyone!”

  When the touch to my shoulder came, I nearly had a heart attack. The straps were undone first.

  That should have been my first clue.

  Rawling always took off the soundproof headset first, then the blindfold.

  This person, however, began with the straps.

  As soon as my arms were free, I lifted my hands and pulled off my blindfold myself. Then my headset.

  “Oh,” I said. “Hi.”

  “I was looking for you,” my father said. “And from what your mom’s told me about your recent virtual-reality simulations with the robot, I figured you might be at the lab. I’d just reached the door when I heard you call out. . . .”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You all right?”

  He looked tired and worried. I could tell he hadn’t shaved yet, and his hair was messy. Because of all the love on his face, I wanted to tell him I was sorry for being such a jerk the night before.

  But I just couldn’t do it. So I simply said, “Yes. I’m all right.”

  “I thought you were always supposed to be under supervision,”

  my father said, looking concerned. “Where
’s Rawling?”

  “Right here.” While my father and I were talking, Rawling had stepped into the room.

  My father turned to face Rawling. “This is unusual. I thought he was supposed to be under supervision.”

  “Yes,” Rawling snapped. “Believe me. This is unusual.”

  I struggled to sit up on the bed.

  “What’s happening?” I asked angrily. “Out there you don’t say a word when you arrive with the platform buggy. I wake up here and I’m all alone. It’s like once you had the—“

  Rawling cut off my words. “Could Tyce and I speak in

  private?” Rawling asked my father.

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on,” my father replied firmly.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Rawling said. “I’ll explain soon. But for security reasons, I need to speak with your son in private.”

  My father didn’t reply to Rawling. Instead he said to me, “Are you all right with that, Tyce?”

  I was glad he allowed me to speak for myself. I nodded.

  “I’ll go,” my father told Rawling. “But I’ve already seen enough to make me wonder what’s going on. Let me tell you this.

  Mess with Tyce, and you mess with me. Got it? As Tyce’s dad, I won’t fight his battles for him, but I’ll fight his battles with him.”

  I was surprised at his tone. And suddenly, proud. I almost asked him to stay.

  But he marched out too quickly, the anger showing in his quick steps and the straightness of his shoulders.

  “You left me alone out there,” I said to Rawling. “Then alone in here. And what about the alien?”

  “There was no alien,” Rawling said.

  “Sure there was,” I argued. “I saw you take it into the dome. It was—“

  “There was no alien,” Rawling said. “It’s that simple. No alien.

  Now I suggest you go back to your mini-dome.”

  “But—“

  “No alien. I refuse to talk about this subject with you

  anymore.”

  Despite his stern words, Rawling seemed to be quietly pleading with me. Confused by his sudden change in attitude, I wondered what was making him act this way. It had to be something beyond his control. Still, it made me mad. “Come on,” I said. “You can’t . . .”

  “I can do anything I want. I’m director of the Mars Project, and I have almost unlimited authority. Please don’t make me call security to escort you to your mini-dome.”

  With that, Rawling turned and left too.

  &+$37(5

  “Hello, Mr. Neilson,” I said kindly to the man on the hospital bed.

  “Glad to see you’re doing better.”

  If his condition hadn’t been so serious—he’d been in a coma—

  I might have wanted to laugh at how he looked. He was completely bald, and his face sagged with wrinkles so that he resembled a round-headed basset hound. And his eyes were black and blue from where he had slammed against his space-suit visor.

  “I’m glad to be doing better,” he answered.

  I nodded. “I have to tell you, when I picked you up in the greenhouse, it looked pretty bad.”

  I was probably fishing for a compliment, expecting he might thank me for saving his life, because he’d said so little since I wheeled into the hospital room to visit him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Neilson replied.

  Then I realized he’d hit his head hard enough to knock himself out. The space suit had lost air and heat. No wonder he couldn’t remember. So I tried to fill him in.

  “No one told you? You were in the greenhouse. Something was chasing you. You fell down. Your space suit was ripped. They sent a robot in to get you.”

  “It’s not good to make up stories,” Neilson said, frowning at me.

  “I’m not,” I insisted.

  “I was collecting rock samples,” he explained. “I fell and tumbled for quite a distance. Jagged rocks ripped my space suit.

  Meds in a platform buggy rescued me.”

  Why was he lying? Nobody collected rock samples in the

  greenhouse.

  “I was there,” I said. “I saw different.”

  “You were there? A kid in a wheelchair?”

  “I mean I was there, controlling a robot body. I saw the path in the greenhouse where you’d been running.”

  “Not true.”

  “But I can prove it. There was a voice recording. You said something was chasing you. I heard it. That’s why I’m here. To ask you about that.”

  “You’re mistaken. Stop bothering me with this nonsense. I need to rest.”

  “Nonsense? It’s not nonsense. It’s—“

  “Med! Med!” Timothy Neilson called loudly to another room.

  “Could you ask this young man to leave? He persists in bothering me.”

  Seconds later, a large man appeared with Rawling behind him.

  “Tyce,” Rawling said sternly, “this man needs recovery time.

  He took a bad spill down a cliff. Maybe you should go now.”

  “Down a cliff! Come on. He was in—“

  “Enough, Tyce,” Rawling warned me. “Say good-bye.”

  I could tell it was useless to argue.

  “Furthermore,” Rawling continued, “I suggest you talk about this with no one else. Including your parents.”

  “Or else?” I said angrily, not believing this was the Rawling I’d known for years. What had gotten into him?

  “Or else they will be shipped back to Earth,” he said bluntly.

  I turned my wheelchair and pushed past him.

  I was getting kicked out. Just like a half hour earlier, I’d been kicked out of Dr. Harrington’s office when I’d gone to ask him how the alien was doing.

  Now I was really, really mad.

  &+$37(5

  I was beginning to find that writing in my diary helped me get my thoughts straight. Early in the evening, instead of going to the telescope as I often did, I stayed in our mini-dome and began to type on the keyboard.

  I wrote all the things I knew for sure about what had happened.

  Earlier in the day I captured an alien. Two men in

  space suits met me in a platform buggy and took the

  alien into the dome. Since then Rawling has

  pretended the alien doesn’t exist. Dr. Harrington

  refuses to talk to me. Timothy Neilson acts like he

  wasn’t attacked by these aliens.

  I was in the middle of a big stretch and yawn when I thought of something else. I banged away at my keyboard.

  Something is strange. Rawling told me he didn’t

  want the alien inside the dome because our air

  might kill it and because it might have alien

  viruses or alien bacteria that might hurt humans.

  But the men in the space suits immediately took the

  alien into the dome. Does that mean they already

  knew it was safe for the alien and for us? And if

  it is safe, could that mean it isn’t truly an

  alien?

  That’s as far as I got with my diary. I knew who could help me with this question.

  “Mom!” I shouted. “Mom!”

  I pushed away from the computer and rolled toward my door.

  “Mom! Mom!”

  She met me at the doorway.

  “I have to ask you something!”

  “That’s it? Yelling like that and all you have is a question?”

  “A big question. About genetic experiments.”

  Mom moved to my bed and sat on the edge. I wheeled around to face her.

  “How does it work? When you try to make a different kind of plant? You know, the DNA and stuff like that.”

  “How long an answer do you want?”

  “Short. Like an overview.”

  She nodded. “Picture a circle with a dot in the center.”

  “Done.”

  “That’s a simple drawing of a
cell under a microscope. The circle is the outer wall. Everything inside the circle and around the dot is a plasma with nutrients. The dot in the center is the nucleus.

  The nucleus is the computer software that runs the cell. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “As a biologist, I can only marvel at how God has made the nucleus so simple, yet so complex. It contains the DNA you mentioned, which is microscopic strands of protein. This protein is in the form of a double helix, which is the shape of a ladder that has been twisted into a spiral. Still with me?”

  “Still with you.”

  “The double helix shape lets the DNA duplicate perfectly, so that one cell can photocopy itself a trillion times and it will still be a perfect copy, no mistakes. That’s important to genetic experiments. Very important.”

  “Important,” I said.

  “Let’s talk about flies, for example. Every creature, including a human, begins as one cell. That cell divides and divides and divides. As it divides, the DNA of the cells programs the different cells to specialize. Some cells become skin cells, other cells become eye cells, and so on.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “What’s absolutely mind-bogglingly amazing,” she said,

  showing her excitement for her work, “is that the DNA packed into that single first cell contains the entire genetic code for that creature or plant. One cell, hundreds of times smaller than the head of a pin, contains the blueprint to build a fly. Or a sheep. Or a

  monkey. DNA is incredible. That’s partly why I first began to believe in God—because it was too difficult to believe that something this amazing could develop by accident.”

  I nodded. “Experiments . . .”

  “Yes. Experiments. Decades ago, back in the twentieth century, scientists realized it would be very simple to change a species. All they had to do was change the DNA when it was at the one-cell stage. Let me put it this way. Is it easier to change a trillion cells, or is it easier to change the original cell and let the changes in that first cell be programmed into every cell as it divides?”

  “No-brainer,” I said. “Get to the first cell.”

  “That’s what they did. I remember reading about one of the first genetic experiments on fruit flies. Scientists changed the DNA that programmed eye growth. When these flies hatched, they had up to fourteen pairs of eyes. Eyes on their legs, wings, backs, chest.