Diggers: The Sharp Edge of the Universe (6 page)

“
Digger Boy Falls
In A
Hole
,” read the caption at the top of the page.

“Well, you made the front page, Noodle.” Quinn ignored the “tsk” from Maggie.

“What were you thinking exactly, Noodle? Sorry, Maggie—I mean Finn?” Gus couldn't keep the irritation out of his voice.

“I wasn’t.” Finn stared at the rotating picture and let the waves of embarrassment beat him down.

“Well, that’s true.” Quinn’s jaw
tightened,
and Finn wondered if he could still breathe.

Finn would have given anything, even his fish Quigley, to be able to tell his dad what he'd been doing if he thought his dad would understand. But for Gus—the head of all the Diggers—having a son who wanted to be a Scientist would have been like changing species.
Absolutely impossible.

“You’ve been late to class, or missed every day but yesterday.” Gus sipped his coffee carefully, but his white-knuckled fist gave his anger away.

Finn gave a very happy Quinn a crusty look and nodded. Of course, Quinn had told on him.

“Maybe if you were on time and actually going to class you’d be able to handle something as dangerous as…stairs.” Maggie patted Gus on the shoulder to try to calm him down, and went back to prepping the evening meal before her shift started.

“I want you to be on time to Digger Training from now on. Do you understand?” Gus’s face glowed blood red, and the forced calm in his voice sent a shiver up Finn’s spine.

“Yes, sir.”
The moment he said the words, Finn felt his dreams of becoming a Scientist start to slip away.

Gus pushed his mass away from the table, gave Maggie a peck on the cheek, and headed for the door.

As soon as the door
whooshed
shut, Finn got up and started for his room. As he passed, Quinn grabbed his arm.

“Don’t,” Quinn growled, “make me look stupid again.”

“Don’t worry, Bear—sorry Mom, I mean Quinn. You look stupid no matter what I do.” Finn yanked his arm out of Quinn’s vise grip.

“Boys…” Maggie warned without turning away from the dishes.

“That’s right! And don’t you forget it!” Quinn said.

Quinn was as thick in brains as he was in body. Finn could see him sitting at the table trying to figure out what just happened.

Finn walked into his room thinking about how to make it to the Science Lab and still be on time every day. He could just shove all the microscope slides into his backpack. That might work.

Nothing had been in the
NewsPad
about the new discovery, so the Scientists must have still been performing experiments on it. He would have to slip into the Science Lab tonight, but he’d have only about thirty minutes before Digger training and it took him twenty minutes to take the hover and make it to class on time.

Ten minutes each night would have to be enough.

He snagged his backpack and headed out of his living quarters. Quinn had already left for work, so Finn didn't have to worry about him. Finn raced down the hall and slid around the corner. He took a quick peek in the window to make sure the Science Lab was empty and ran for the door.

He pulled out his entrance key and the door slid open. “Hello, Mrs. Margaret O’Reilly,” ELAINA’s sultry voice greeted him.

Once again, the only light in the room shined on the glorious new piece of metal. This time, Finn didn’t bother to creep under the tables. He ran straight to the new discovery.

Mikayladite.

“Ah, geez,” He gave a nearby chair a frustrated kick.

He’d be the happiest kid in the universe if he never had to see or hear
that
name again.

He grabbed the microscope with a sliver of the metal still under it and took a long look at the microscopic animals living within the metal.

He gave a low whistle.
“Holy asteroids.”

He could actually see the organisms burp and fart, and every time they did, a thick wall formed in the metal.

Finn pushed the microscope away, and made his way through the chairs and tables to the box of slides listed “trash.” When he reached the box, he smiled. None of the slides had been thrown away yet. Grabbing handfuls, he carefully pushed them into his pockets. Studying the slides would make up for the boring evening he would soon endure when he got to class.

As Finn crept over to the microscope for one last look at the metal sample, he noticed a discarded hammer with the head broken off lying on the floor.

“What in the universe?” he whispered.

The Scientists had used the hammer to test the strength of the new metal, and it had ripped the metal head in half! Without thinking, Finn grabbed the sample of metal. He’d expected it to be heavy, but it felt so light the metal slipped out of his hand and hit the floor.

He watched as the sample smashed into a million pieces, leaving a large dent where it hit the floor.

“No, no, no….” He slammed to his knees and picked up the pieces. “How in the universe could this stuff be so fragile?” he mumbled to himself as he scrambled around the floor searching for stray pieces.

By the look of the hammer, the metal could take a hit. Maybe it shattered when hit in the wrong place, kind of like a raw, uncut diamond. He knew he shouldn’t have touched the metal sample. Silently, he cursed himself for the moment of weakness.     As he stood to put a pile of metal shards on the table, the lights in the Science Lab clicked on.

“What,” Lee Fishborne demanded, standing at the door with a small group of Scientists—and Mikayla— “are you doing?"

Chapter 9: Busted—Galaxy Sized

“His name is Finn?” Captain Windblown surveyed Finn like some kind of feral animal.

He’d imagined how his first meeting with Captain Windblown would go hundreds of times, and most of them included the Captain congratulating him for his first amazing discovery. Never had he imagined a scene quite like this.

“Yes, sir,” Mikayla said.

Every adult Finn hoped he’d never see while he snuck around in the Science Lab now stood in a circle around him. Captain Windblown, Lee Fishborne, and his mom—summoned from her shift—each wore differing amounts of anger on their faces.

“And what was your reason for being in the Science Lab?” Captain Windblown asked.

“I was cleaning, sir.” Finn hoped the lie would work.

“Were you?” Captain Windblown eyed him with two decades of experience behind his glare, and Finn fidgeted under the pressure. “Why does the entry log show a Mrs. Margaret O’Reilly entering every night, sometimes three or four times a night? Surely it doesn’t take her four trips just to clean this one room.”

Finn studied his shoes and searched for an explanation, a lie, anything that would get him out of this mess, but nothing came to mind.

“Hand it over.” Maggie held out a hand.

Finn pulled out his copy of her security card, and she snatched it out of his grasp.

“Your son made an illegal copy of your security card,” Captain Windblown gaped at the card in Maggie’s hand. “And he’s been using it to break into the Science Lab? What else is he breaking into?”

“Nothing else.”
Finn finally found his voice, but not for long. “I…I just wanted….”

“What about the discovery?” Spit flew out of Lee Fishborne’s mouth. “He’s ruined it!”   

This hadn't been the way he thought he’d meet Lee Fishborne either. His daydreams had always included his holding up a new shiny metal and Lee Fishborne carrying him, and the new discovery, on his shoulders and hailing him as a hero.

“Wait.” Mikayla eyed the bulk in Finn’s pocket. “What’s in his pocket?”

Finn closed his eyes and silently pleaded for them all to ignore her just this one time. He couldn’t think of a single person on the
SS Vortex
he hated more than Mikayla.

“Turn out your pockets, son,” Captain Windblown said.

Finn knew his life would be over if they saw the contents of his pockets because his mother would kill him before Captain Windblown even tried.

Reluctantly, he pulled the wad of rescued slide samples out of his pocket.

“You’ve been stealing slides?” Lee Fishborne and Mikayla said together.

“It’s not stealing if they’re in the trash!” Finn said. “Whoever is going through the slides is the stupidest person on the Space Station! They’re getting rid of all the good slides and keeping all the lame ones!”

Mikayla winced at the sting of his words, and he smiled with evil joy.

“Yes,” Mr. Fishborne faced him, “it’s not illegal to take trash. But, it
is
illegal to break into the Science Lab with a fake identification card and destroy a new discovery!” His chest heaved and his fists tightened.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fishborne," Maggie said. It was the only thing that made this moment worse, his mom apologizing for him. “I’m sorry, Captain Windblown. I guarantee this will never happen again.”

“With your kind of…substandard parenting, I’m sure it
will
happen again,” Lee Fishborne screamed in Maggie’s face.

Finn watched helplessly as his mom fought to keep herself under control. Under different circumstances, Maggie would have had a fair amount of choice words for Lee Fishborne.

“Yes, Mrs.…” the Captain glanced at Maggie’s nametag, “O’Reilly. And I will further guarantee this never happens again by restricting your son to your quarters until there can be a full inquiry. I don’t take a breach in security lightly.”

Finn walked back to his quarters with his mom following behind. He didn’t dare look back, but he didn’t really need to because he could feel her eye daggers piercing the back of his head. Every once in a while she huffed and mumbled something incoherent.

The moment ELAINA whooshed the door open behind them, Finn made a break for his bedroom before his mom had a chance to follow.

A half hour later his mother called them for dinner. Readying himself for the worst, he stepped out of the hallway and took his seat at the table. Quinn ground his fist in his hand. Maggie cleaned more than usual. Gus said nothing. He just stared at the
Newspad
without sliding to a new page, and with each passing moment Gus's face became a darker shade of crimson.

Finally, Gus looked up from the
Newspad
.
“Why, son?”

“Why are you being nice?” Quinn demanded, turning the same dark red as their father. “What he needs is a good kick in the—"

Yes,
Finn thought,
anything is better than a guilt trip.

Gus held up a hand to quiet Quinn. “Tell me why you did those things, Noodle…sorry Maggie…I meant Finn.”

“Because I don’t want to be a Digger.”
The words rushed out before Finn could stop them, and to make things worse, he babbled on, “I want to be a Scientist. I want it more than anything. I want to make discoveries and help humanoid-kind. I don’t want to dig holes and push dirt around.”

Finn watched for a flicker of understanding in Gus’s face, but nothing came. He looked to his mom, but she just seemed sad. Quinn grew even angrier.

Gus started in. “Eleven generations of O’Reillys have been Diggers. We’re inventors, explorers. We make grand discoveries. Elbert O’Reilly, your great-great-grandfather, invented the Triamond Tip made from the gem discovery he'd found at the triamond mines of Euglor…while
Digging
. The same mines your great-great-great-grandmother on your mother’s side pointed the first Digger to. You probably haven’t gone to enough classes to know, but we still use Elbert’s Triamond Tip, which is a thousand times stronger than old diamond tips. Digging is what we were put on this Space Station to do.”

“The point Gus is trying to make,” Maggie said, “is that we make discoveries of our own, we Diggers…and Janitors.”

Finn couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d been completely honest with his parents, and they answered by trying to compare a Triamond Tip to Mikaylimide? They weren’t even in the same solar system, in his opinion. Mikalyimide, well, besides the stupid name, was
so
much cooler.

“Never mind.”
Finn stared at his dinner, mad at himself for even attempting to explain something so complex to simple Diggers.

“We do mind!” Gus’s anger finally exploded. “We understand you better than you think. But there are things you're refusing to understand. Fine! Let’s talk about what you did. You
stole
your mother’s identification card and used it to break into the Science Lab. And while you were
in
the Science Lab, you broke a sample of a new
discovery
!”

No words formed in Finn's brain. In the face of his dad's anger and disappointment, his lifelong desire to be a Scientist didn’t seem like such a strong defense.

“On top of everything else,” Gus momentarily regained control of his anger, which made him seem more dangerous, “your lies and sneaking around may cost your mother her job.”