Death Trap (3 page)

Mom was waiting for me in one of the chairs in the common area. She had thick dark hair that was cut short, like an upside-down bowl. She didn't care much what she looked like—especially during the long, long months while my father was gone between refueling stops on Mars. It meant more to have a hairstyle that didn't take much fussing and gave her as much time as possible for her science. As the leading plant biologist on the station, Mom had a big job: to genetically alter Earth plants so they could grow on Mars.

She gave me a tired smile—the 14-hours-of-hard-scientific-work smile. I gave her one in return.

“How are you doing with your journal?” she asked, like this was just another normal day.

“Fine,” I said, like this was just another normal day. “What's for supper?”

Dying was funny. Not funny ha-ha. Funny strange. Everyone thought about it all the time, but nobody wanted to talk about it.

I grunted as I pushed my wheelchair toward her. It was getting harder and harder to move it. I worried that pretty soon I might not be able to move it at all.

Mom stood at the microwave and hit the buttons.

As I waited for the seconds to count down, I did what I always did whenever I had to wait. I reached down to the pouch hanging from the armrest of my wheelchair and pulled out my three red juggling balls. I began to juggle, keeping all three in the air so it looked like one blur. Some people twiddle their thumbs. Me, I like to juggle. Rawling says I learned it because it's something athletic I can do better than most people who aren't crippled. He's probably right.

The microwave dinged that it was ready.

I caught the juggling balls and put them in the pouch. With effort, I pushed my wheelchair toward Mom.

She handed me a plastic nutrient tube about the size of a chocolate bar. Red.

“Spaghetti and meatballs?” I asked.

She nodded. I've never tasted real spaghetti and meatballs, so I have to take Mom's word for it that the nute-tube stuff is not nearly as good as the real thing.

As usual, she prayed over it.

As usual, I didn't.

As usual, it made her sad.

“Our oxygen level is dropping faster and faster,” Mom said softly. “How can I convince you to place your faith in God? If we have only a month left …”

“I only believe what I can see or measure,” I said. In the colony, I was surrounded by scientists. All their experiments were on data that could be seen—and measured.

“But faith is the confident hope in things unseen,” she insisted, a bit teary-eyed. “Otherwise it wouldn't be a matter of faith. We don't see your dad, but we know he loves us, no matter where his cargo ship is. Faith in God is like that.”

Right, I thought. I wasn't going to tell her that it wasn't easy to love a space-pilot father you never saw. And it wasn't easy to believe he loved me, either.

“Mom—” we had argued this so much that I decided to stick with the same old argument—“you can't make me believe in God. If you want me to pretend, I will.”

“No,” she said, with her mouth tight the way it is when she's vexed. “I always want you to be honest with me.”

“There you go,” I said. “End of argument.”

I ripped off the top of my nute tube. Most of the scientists needed to use a knife or scissors. I didn't since I had developed a lot of strength in my arms and hands.

I guzzled the red paste, then tossed it on the table. “I'm going.” Mom and I were good friends, but we were both grumpy from our argument about God and from the oxygen problem. I needed time by myself.

She didn't ask me where I was going. She didn't need to. There isn't much room in the dome for me to get lost. And everyone knows I'm a telescope freak. I spent any spare time I had on the third-level deck at the telescope.

By the time I wheeled to the center of the dome 15 minutes later, I was sweating from the effort. Before, it would have taken only a couple of minutes and hardly any muscle power. This oxygen thing was scary. But what could I do about it?

The deck was dim because all but the most-needed lights had been shut down. Just another reminder of the oxygen problem.

Around me, men and women scientists walked slowly on the paths, going from minidome to minidome for whatever business they had. They nodded or said hello as they passed me.

In my wheelchair, I nodded and said hello back. Other than that, as I rolled along, I just stared upward at the stars above the dome. Other people on other expeditions might one day explore the planet outside. Not us. For starters, I wondered if we'd be dead soon. Dad was piloting the next cargo ship, and it wouldn't arrive for five days. One day after the colony dome ran out of oxygen.

I kept staring upward. My gaze drifted to the giant dark solar panels that hung just below the clear roof of the dome. These solar panels, which turned the energy of sunlight into electricity, were killing us. Part of this electricity powered our computers and other equipment. Most of the electricity, though, flowed as a current into the water of the oxygen tank. The electrical current broke the water—H20—into the gases of hydrogen and oxygen, two parts hydrogen for every one part of oxygen. The hydrogen was used as fuel for some of the generators. The oxygen, of course, we breathed.

But something was wrong with the panels. Nobody could figure it out. Taken down and tested, they worked perfectly. But back up at the roof, the panels were making less and less electricity each day. With less power, we had less oxygen. It was that simple. I focused upward, thinking about that.

Then it hit me. It wasn't the panels. It was the sunlight. What if the panels worked fine, but they weren't getting enough sunlight?

And I thought I knew why!

I spun my wheelchair around and began to move as fast as I could toward the director's minidome.

At that moment all of the dome's lights snapped off. The hum of the generator quit.

In total silence and darkness, I froze.

Then I heard a scream.

Unless I was wrong, that scream had come from the direction of my minidome.

CHAPTER 5

Within seconds, the total blackness inside the dome was filled with flashlight beams, making the air look like a giant confused sword fight of lights.

I still didn't move. I didn't have a flashlight. I couldn't see where to go. In a wheelchair, the last thing you want to do is hit something that will knock you flying. When you can't use your legs, it's embarrassing to have to crawl along the ground and try to pull yourself up into the wheelchair again.

More screaming reached my ears. A strange blue glow began to appear in the dome, like neon ice melting in all directions.

The emergency backup lights were on. In the glow, I saw a figure running toward me, with other figures chasing it.

“Hey!” I shouted.

Shouting was a very dumb thing to do. It alerted the running person to the fact that I was in my wheelchair and waiting.

Whoever it was turned and shielded his face with his arm as he kept running toward me. In the weird glow of the backup lights, I didn't have a chance of figuring out who it was. He darted sideways to go around my wheelchair.

Sticking out my arm, I tried to stop him. Since people were chasing him, they probably had a reason for wanting to stop him.

That was another dumb thing to do. If I'd actually grabbed him, the force of his momentum could have ripped my arm off at my shoulder.

He passed me. Other dark figures got closer as they kept chasing him.

“Hey!” I shouted, louder. This time I did want to be seen. Getting trampled in my wheelchair is not my favorite evening activity.

“Hey!” I shouted one more time—and not because I wanted to warn anyone. This time it was because my wheelchair was suddenly moving.

The person behind me had given me a shove! He wanted me and my wheelchair to block the people chasing him.

I tried squeezing my brakes, but it was too late. I was on one of the sidewalk paths between minidomes. There was hardly any room to move around me on either side.

There must have been 10 people chasing this guy. And with 10 people all running like crazy, with hardly any room on the path to begin with, it's not fun to be the wheelchair that flies directly into the crowd.

Bang!

Something hard hit me in the face.

I tumbled out of my wheelchair and skidded on my chin into the side of a minidome. Two other people stepped on me and tripped. Someone behind them fell right on top of me. Then something else hit me on top of my head—someone's knee, I found out later. It mashed my face into the floor of the dome. I cracked my forehead in a thump that sounded like wood against concrete.

After that, I didn't remember anything else, except that slowly it got darker and darker and the noises became quieter and quieter until I finally faded out completely.

CHAPTER 6

It smelled like someone was ramming a bottle of bleach up my nose.

Smelling salts.

It snapped me right out of my black daze.

I woke up with Rawling on one side of me and my mother looking down, worried, from the other side. I was on my back on an examining table in the medical emergency room.

“Hey,” I said with a croak. “Someone turned the lights back on.”

Mom sighed with relief, smiled, and wiped my face with a cold, wet cloth.

“Welcome back, scout,” Rawling said. “Now you know what it would be like to play football.”

“And be the football?” I groaned. “See, I told you it's a dumb game.”

Rawling and I argue about that all the time. He's got a DVD-gigarom collection of Super Bowl games, and he loves watching them. I can't figure it out. A bunch of guys running into each other and a bunch more people screaming at them.

“What happened out there?” I asked. “I was just minding my own business when it went dark. I heard screams and saw this guy getting chased and then—”

“He pushed you into the people chasing him and got away.”

“Nobody gets away from anybody in this dome,” I said. “It's too small.”

“Whoever it was,” Rawling replied, “got away long enough to stop running and find a way to mingle with the crowds. That's the best way to hide in here. Just look like everybody else. He's not a stranger, since the only humans on Mars are the ones already living under the dome.”

Mom asked, “Did you get a look at his face?”

“Couldn't see anything,” I said. “What did he do?”

“Nothing,” Rawling said. “At least nothing we can figure out.”

“I heard shouting in the dark.”

“That came from the minidome next to ours,” Mom said. “Someone pushed in one of the walls when the lights went out.”

Not that collapsing a wall would be difficult. Although the minidomes were built to act as temporary air-sealed shelters if the big dome ever temporarily lost its atmosphere, the walls were made of lightweight, rigid plastic.

“I don't get it,” I said.

“Neither do we. The director has a security detail looking into it. Turn over.”

“Huh?”

“You mean ‘pardon me,' right?” Mom said, grinning at me.

“Yes, Mom,” I said. “Pardon me?”

“Turn over,” Rawling repeated. “I need to examine your back.”

“It's my head that hurts,” I said.

“Turn over,” he insisted. “Doctor knows best.”

Slowly I managed to flip myself over on the examining table. It would have been faster for Rawling to help me, but he knew that was one thing I liked to do for myself.

Rawling lifted my shirt and ran his fingers up my back. He stopped near my neck and felt around. “Does this hurt?”

“No.”

He took his hands out from under my shirt and squeezed my neck, just above my shoulders. “Does this hurt?”

“No. I told you already. It's my head that hurts.”

Rawling moved my head gently from side to side. “Can you feel any pain in your neck when I do this?”

“Just my head.”

“Good.”

“Good? You like it that my head hurts?”

“Good that it doesn't appear you've done any damage to your back and shoulders. Come back tomorrow, and I'll take some X-rays to be sure.”

“Doc,” I said, rolling over and sitting up, “why do you do this same exam of my back and shoulders every time I come in for a checkup?”

Seeming startled, Rawling glanced over at Mom. She looked at me and then back at the doctor. She shook her head, as if she was telling him no.

“I worry about your spinal column,” Rawling said. “It's not as strong as it should be.” He dropped his gaze.

Rawling never did that unless he was uncomfortable. I wondered if, for the first time, he was lying to me.

But I couldn't imagine why. And I couldn't imagine that Mom was in on the lie. Things were getting weirder all the time.

CHAPTER 7

I paused to rest my fingers. I thought about what I was writing. The strangest part was that security had searched the entire dome a dozen times and couldn't find those tanks. They are the size of scuba-diving tanks I've read about in my DVD-gigarom books. Except these tanks have super-compressed air and last 10 people about 2 days each.