Diggers: The Sharp Edge of the Universe (9 page)

Somehow Finn didn’t think her confession would help him get out of this situation.

“You little…Digger brat.”
Lee Fishborne’s thin face turned the same dark red as Maggie’s. “You disgusting little piece of trash! Get back here with my daughter. When I’m done with you, they won’t even let you be a
janitor
!”

“What did you just say?” Maggie’s chest puffed out and she gave Lee Fishborne a hard wallop, sending him flying and squealing out of the picture. Finn felt hot waves of embarrassment beat his face as he helplessly watched his mom chase Lee Fishborne out of the screen. She didn’t even yelp or twitch when she received a few dozen zaps from the bully chip.

“Don’t…you…
ever
call my son….” High-pitched male screams came from somewhere outside of the view finder, and Finn watched his dad and Quinn dive out of the screen after Maggie.

“Maggie! Don’t hit him. They’ll send you to prison!” Gus wrestled with something Finn could only assume was his mom, off-screen.

“If they’re going to send me to jail, at
least
let me finish him off first,” Maggie bellowed.

His parents were mad at him, but they still loved him, and his mom’s savage response to Lee Fishborne caused tears to well up in Finn’s eyes. He’d been the worst son in history, and yet she still loved him.

“Stop it! All of you,” Mikayla screamed. “We can’t get back to the Space Station.”

The words were lost in the parent battle. The adults spent the next thirty minutes yelling at each other, making threats, and crying. Lee Fishborne kept going on about Finn killing his little princess, which made Finn snort a laugh. Mikayla could be a lot of things, but “Princess” definitely wasn’t one of them.

Finally, Captain Windblown’s security personnel calmed everybody down. The adults sat in seats, silent except for the exchange of dirty looks and frequent heavy sighs.

“Finnigan, is it?” Captain Windblown said.
“Son, why in the universe did you steal the DUMP?”

Finn stared at the floor. “I…b-borrowed…I don’t really know, sir. I just wanted to figure out what the anomaly is.”

“And you thought
you
could figure it out better than our team of professionals because…?"

Finn studied the heavy silver buckles running up the sides of his boots. “Umm….”

“What in celestial dust came over you?” Captain Windblown rubbed his bald head.

“Sir?”
Mikayla stepped into view.

“Oh, yes, dear?” Captain Windblown said.

“We’ve learned a lot about the anomaly in the last twenty minutes. I think it would be a good idea, sir, while everyone is trying to pull us out of the anomaly, to send the information we’ve collected back to the Space Station. You see, sir, we’ve tried to back out, but the glass is melting behind us.” Mikayla's superb diversion tactic didn't go unnoticed by Finn.

“What have you learned, Princess?” Lee Fishborne shot out of his chair and practically put a nose print on the screen.

“First of all, Dad, if you call me Princess again, I’ll break the communication. You know how much I hate it.” Mikayla gave him a severe glare. “I’m not five years old anymore. I’m almost fourteen.”

“Okay, sweetheart.”
Lee Fishborne threw his hands up in surrender. “What have you learned…Mikayla?”

“Well, I haven’t really learned anything. Reggie and Finn have done a lot of scans, and we know the anomaly is glass, but we have no idea how thick it is.”

Lee Fishborne slapped a hand to his head.
“Glass.”

A murmur passed through the command deck, and Captain Windblown had a whispered conversation with Lee Fishborne and Finn’s parents.

“Kids, we’re going to try to pull you out of the hole,” Captain Windblown said. “In the meantime, I want you to send us what you’ve learned through ELAINA so we can start processing the information immediately.”

The wind rushed out of Finn's lungs. A punch in the gut would have been less painful. This meant he wouldn’t be making any discoveries. He’d be in jail watching Mikayla’s dad steal yet another discovery from the Diggers.

“Yes…sir,” he said.

Chapter 13: Lost Cause

“Thank you sir,” Finn said as Reggie and Mikayla loaded the last of the food rations and fuel cells.

They had one month’s worth of food, water, and fuel, and no adults onboard after a number of failed attempts. The rations had been loaded through a space-to-space transfer—a long tube the diameter of Mikayla’s waist.
 
Finn’s dad, Quinn, and Lee Fishborne had all tried unsuccessfully to reach the DUMP, and they'd failed at the same point every time. The moment they started into the hole in the glass, the atmospheric change sent them spinning out of control into space, and the Space Station had to send out a rescue team to pick them up.

Lee Fishborne actually yelled obscenities into the Com in his space helmet, which was all caught on the live feed for everyone in the Space Station to hear. Finn still laughed at the vision of Lee Fishborne flipping over and over in space and cussing with every turn. Mikayla turned a deep crimson when his profanity reverberated over ELAINA’s Com link, and she mumbled something about it being the first time she’d ever heard her father say those words.

Reggie spent most of the time watching the auger, or watching Mikayla. They’d all hoped, even if no one had admitted it out loud, that at least one of the space-to-space exchanges would be successful so they’d have an adult on board. The thought of turning this stupid idea over to an adult to fix sounded wonderful. Finn would’ve even welcomed Belch, but the big man hadn't even made it close before the entire tube ripped away from the Space Station and sent Belch careening off into space. Lieutenant Orlando tried to squeeze through the transfer tube, but even his boneless squid-like body couldn’t compress enough, so he ended up stuck in the middle of the tube, screeching like an Earth orangutan.

When no one else would volunteer, the
SS Vortex
loaded the DUMP with as much food, water, and fuel as they could hold, then spent hours downloading sensor and testing information using ELAINA.

Finn knew the three of them coming back alive wasn’t nearly as important as the information they gathered along the way. He had talked to his mom and dad and sometimes Quinn called to give him advice. The conversations usually ended with someone getting mad or his mom crying.

“Never
you mind
, Finnigan.” Captain Windblown’s eyebrows were stuck together with worry, and his forehead wrinkled under the strain of the past few days. “Make sure you send all of the information collected down to Mr. Fishborne. He’ll need it to make the necessary analysis for the discoveries.”

Finn kicked at his boot buckle. ELAINA received the daily Space Station
NewsPad,
and so far there hadn’t been a single report about any of them onboard the DUMP. The news people made it look like Lee Fishborne spearheaded this entire great new discovery from
Vortex
.

Finn finally nodded, and the captain cut the communication.

Finn spun in the captain’s chair. “I think I understand what you meant, Reg, about the Diggers making all the discoveries.”

Reggie pulled his gaze off the auger monitor and looked at Finn for a moment.
“Yep.”

“Excuse me?” Mikayla’s voice coming from right behind them made both boys jump. “Diggers don’t make discoveries. I know. I’ve been on lots of excavations. The Scientists make the discoveries. The Diggers dig.”

Finn readied his response, but Reggie said, “No.”

Mikayla gave an irritated gasp, “No? No? What, exactly, do you mean by ‘no’?”

“Diggers make the discoveries,” Reggie said, like it should be obvious to everyone, but Finn sort of understood how Mikayla felt. He hadn’t really understood it until now.

“Look, Mik, can I call you Mik? See, we’re Diggers, and just about every Digger there is has a nickname, except Dan. He works with Belch. But Dan is sort of Dan's nickname too, because he drives the DUMP Advancement Navigator…kinda like his parents knew he’d run a DAN.” Finn laughed at the revelation. “Anyway, Reg figured it out. See, the Diggers they…well, we…almost always find the stuff
way
before the Scientists even see it. Diggers have to know what’s new, just like the Scientists do, or else they could dig right through a major discovery and never know it. Yet the Scientists get all the credit. I want to, well, used to want to, be a Scientist. They get all the glory, but the Diggers make the discoveries.”

The boys nodded and smiled, waiting expectantly for Mikayla to understand.

“That,” she said, rage flashing in her blue eyes, “is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Diggers dig! Scientists discover!”

Finn felt a wave of heat flush his cheeks.
“Really?
So, we aren’t out here discovering that this anomaly is glass? We aren’t the ones who figured out why we couldn’t go backwards? It’s just a figment of our imaginations that we have to send our discoveries back to your dad…even though
we
will already know what those discoveries are, and we've processed all the scans on them before he even gets to see them?”

“Yep,” Reggie said.

“Well,” Mikayla gave a breathy huff. “I just…you’re…well, it’s just stupid. Scientists…they, well
we,
make the…discoveries. Diggers just….”

“Dig,” the boys said together.

“Mr. Finnigan O’Reilly,” ELAINA purred. “Sensors are indicating a thinning of the anomaly wall.”

“No way!”
Finn swung around to watch the auger finally break through the anomaly. “ELAINA, get Captain Windblown on the Com!”

“What is it, son?” Captain Windblown’s round face and handlebar mustache appeared on the screen.

“ELAINA just indicated there’s a thinning of the anomaly wall.” Finn added, “uh, sir.”

All eyes were on the auger and the cracking glass as the Triamond tip began to pierce the wall.

The moment they broke through, Mikayla screamed.

“What is it? What in the asteroid dust is going—” Captain Windblown’s words were cut off.

“No spinning,” Reggie said, grabbing onto his safety harness and strapping himself in.

Finn clutched the manual navigational controls and pulled with every ounce of his strength to try to stop the auger's out-of-control spinning.

“Pull!” Mikayla planted her feet against the chair and the console for stability next to Finn. She and Finn pulled on the manual navigational controls, and finally the spinning slowed.

Finn and Mikayla slumped to the ground, dragging in great gasps of air.

“The spin has stopped, Mr. Finnigan O’Reilly,” ELAINA said.

“Duh,” Finn panted.

“The spin caused the DUMP to lose contact with the Space Station, Mr. Finnigan O’Reilly,” ELAINA explained in her sweet voice. “Would you like me to attempt to regain contact?”

Adrenaline caused him to scream.
“Uh,
yes
!”

“Finn.”
Mikayla leaned over Reggie who was sprawled out on the floor. “Reggie’s passed out! What should I do?”

“It happens all the time. Just punch him on the shoulder,” Finn said.

Mikayla gave Reggie a timid tap. Unconscious, he barely moved.

Finn laughed at Mikayla's pathetic punch. “Like this.”

He punched Reggie’s massive, muscled arm as hard as he could. The blow barely moved Reggie more than Mikayla’s tap had, but Finn's punch proved to be enough to make Reggie snort back to the living.

“Does he always pass out?” Mikayla eyed Reggie like a mother watches over a sick child.

“Only when he thinks his head’s gonna go through the window,” Finn said.

Mikayla looked at him like he was crazy.

“Oh, never mind. It’s a long story.” Finn said.

Reggie blinked and looked around. “What happened?”

“Not sure, but when we broke through, the DUMP got sort of sucked into the space beyond and we started spinning. ELAINA says we lost contact with
Vortex
, but she’s trying to reconnect.”

“Not good.” Reggie unbuckled and checked the navigational screen. “More space.”

“What?” Mikayla read the screen over his shoulder.

“Look out the window. We're still in space.” Finn said.

“But there’s nothing. No stars. No asteroids. No planets. It’s just black,” Mikayla said.

“Mr. Finnigan O’Reilly,” ELAINA’s soft voice interrupted their attempts to scan the area. “I am unable to re-establish a connection with the Space Station
Vortex
computer.”

“Forget about it for now, ELAINA,” Finn said. “We need you to scan the area and figure out why we can’t see any planets and stuff.”

“Working,” ELAINA replied. Seconds passed, but the moments felt like hours, just like how sitting in the Digger classes felt. “Scanners show nothing in the immediate area, but the DUMP is now moving through space at a speed I cannot measure and is no longer drilling.”