Authors: Sigmund Brouwer
Final Battle (17 page)
“I'm not sure what you're talking about.”
“The bottom of my leg. Where you touched me.”
“Here?” Dad grabbed my calf and squeezed.
It felt like electricity running through my bodyâgood, tingling electricity. “Yes! There!” I'd never felt any sensation in my legs before!
Dad high-fived me. Except we slapped palms so hard that it drove us apart in the zero gravity. Seconds later, Dad banged into one wall. I banged into another.
And all we did was grin at each other.
If only the chance to walk was all I had to worry about in the next few months⦠.
That night, on the final hours before our approach to Mars, I was alone in the navigation cone, watching the planet loom closer and closer. I'd be back on the red planet within 24 hours.
Dad and everyone else on the spaceship were asleep. That meant the ship was on autopilot, so I had the navigation cone to myself.
I should have been asleep too, but another killer headache had struck. Not bad enough to knock me out this time, which would have been a mercy. Instead it had throbbed for about a half hour, leaving me dizzy and unable to sleep.
Usually in my quiet hours I wrote in my journal on my comp-board. So I had taken it to the navigation cone with me.
I had written a little.
I had dimmed all the lights and stared out into space. Through the glass it felt like I could reach out and touch Mars. And what a glorious sight! I was finally almost homeâ after a long three years.
Rawling had reported a huge dust storm, and it was just settling. As light from the sun behind the spaceship hit the planet at the right angle, I watched the horizon of Mars spin into sight.
It brought me Mount Olympus, its huge extinct crater sticking out of the dust storm. The mountain itself was bigger than Colorado and reached 15 miles into the sky.
I kept watching, without feeling sleepy at all.
The beauty made me sad, in a way. Because I wondered if there was a tumor or something in my brain to cause these headaches. Was I going to die? Would this be the last time I'd see something as incredible as Mars with the sun warming it?
To take my mind off my thoughts, I turned to my compboard. But instead of writing, I found myself reading the first entry I had ever put in my journal. It brought back a lot of memories, reminding me of how I'd first learned of my robot-control abilities.
First, today's date: AD 06.20.2039, Earth calendar. It's been a little more than 14 years since the dome was established in 2025. When I think about it, that means some of the scientists and techies in the dome were my age around the year 2000, even though the last millennium seems like ancient history. Of course, kids back then didn't have to deal with water shortage wars and ⦠an exploding population that meant we had to find a way to colonize Mars.
Things have become so desperate on Earth that already 500 billion dollars have been spent on this project, which seems like a lot until you do the math and realize that's only about 10 dollars for every person on the planet.
Kristy Sanders, my mom, used to be Kristy Wallace until she married my father, Chase Sanders. They teamed up with nearly 200 men and women specialists from all countries across the world when the first ships left Earth. I was just a baby, so I can't say I remember, but from what I've been told, those first few years of assembling the dome were heroic. Now we live in comfort. I've got a computer that lets me download e-entertainment from Earth by satellite, and the gardens that were planted when I was a kid make parts of the dome seem like a tropical garden. It isn't a bad place to live.
But now it could become a bad place to die⦠.
Let me say this to anyone on Earth who might read this. If, like me, you have legs that don't work, Mars, with its lower gravity pull, is probably a better place to be than Earth.
That's only a guess, of course, because IÂ haven't had the chance to compare Mars' gravity to Earth's gravity. In fact, I'm the only person in the entire history of mankind who has never been on Earth.
I'm not kidding.
You see, I'm the first person born on Mars. Everyone else here came from Earth nearly eight Martian years agoâ15 Earth years to youâas part of the first expedition to set up a colony. The trip took eight months, and during this voyage my mother and father fell in love.
I smiled. I'd forgotten about that. Back when Mom and Dad first came to Mars, the trip from Mars to Earth had taken eight months. And in just 18 years, scientists had been able to take two months off that time. We were really speeding through space now!
I went back to my first journal entry.
Mom is a leading plant biologist. Dad is a space pilot. They were the first couple to be married on Mars. And the last, for now. They loved each other so much that they married by exchanging their vows over radio phone with a preacher on Earth. When I was born half a Mars year laterâwhich now makes me 14 Earth years oldâit made things so complicated on the colony that it was decided there would be no more marriages and babies until the colony was better established.
What was complicated about a baby on Mars?
Let me put it this way. Because of planetary orbits, spaceships can reach Mars only every three years. (Only four ships have arrived since I was born.) And for what it costs to send a ship from Earth, cargo space is expensive. Very, very expensive. Diapers, baby bottles, cribs, and carriages are not exactly a priority for interplanetary travel.
I did without all that stuff. In fact, my wheelchair isn't even motorized, because every extra pound of cargo costs something like 10,000 dollars.
Just like I did without a modern hospital when I was born. So when my spinal column twisted funny during birth and damaged the nerves to my legs, there was no one to fix them. Which is why I'm in a wheelchair.
But it could be worse. On Earth, I'd weigh 110 pounds. Here, I'm only 42 pounds, so I don't have to fight gravity nearly as hard as Earth kids.
I had written that when I had barely turned 14 in Earth years. I knew now, of course, that the spinal damage hadn't been an accident. But a lot of things had happened since that first journal entry. On Mars, Terratakers had tried taking over the dome. They'd tried to fake evidence of an ancient civilization and then attempted to gain control of a space torpedo that would let them dominate the Earth. And on Earth, they'd tried to kill all the vice governors of the World United Federation. They'd forced us robot-control kids to become an army of soldier robots.
And in the middle of all that had been my only journey away from Mars.
I saw the entry I'd written during the space trip to Earth nearly three years earlier, and I remembered the incredible feeling of homesickness.
A little over two weeks ago, I was on Mars. Under the dome. Living life in a wheelchair⦠. Then, with the suddenness of a lightning bolt, I discovered I would be returning to Earth with Dad as he piloted this spaceship on the three-year round-trip to Earth and back to Mars⦠.
I'd been dreaming of Earth for years.
After all, I was the only human in the history of mankind who had never been on the planet. I'd only been able to watch it through the telescope and wonder about snowcapped mountains and blue sky and rain and oceans and rivers and trees and flowers and birds and animals.
Earth.
When Rawling had told me I was going to visit Earth, I'd been too excited to sleep. Finally, I'd be able to see everything I'd only read about under the cramped protection of the Mars Dome, where it never rained, the sky outside was the color of butterscotch, and the mountains were dusty red.
But when it came time to roll onto the shuttle that would take us to the Moon Racer, waiting in orbit around Mars, I had discovered an entirely new sensation. Homesickness. Marsâand the domeâwas all I knew.
Dozens of technicians and scientists had been there when we left, surprising me by their cheers and affection. Rawling had been the second-to-last person to say good-bye, shaking my hand gravely, then giving me a hug.
And the last person?
That had been Mom, biting her lower lip and blinking back tears. It hurt so much seeing her sadâ and feeling my own sadness. I'd nearly rolled my wheelchair away from the shuttle. At that moment three years seemed like an eternity. I knew that if an accident happened anywhere along the 100 million miles of travel to Earth and back, I might never see her again. Mom must have been able to read my thoughts because she'd leaned forward to kiss me and told me to not even dare think about staying. She'd whispered that although she'd miss me, she knew I was in God's hands, so I wouldn't be alone. She said she was proud of me for taking this big step, and she'd pray every day for the safe return of me and Dad.
The first few nights on the spaceship had not been easy. Alone in my bunk I had stared upward in the darkness for hours and hours, surprised at how much the sensation of homesickness could fill my stomach.
Who would think that a person could miss a place that would kill you if you walked outside without a space suit⦠.
Since that journey to Earth, these three years had passed. I was 17 now. I'd seen robot-control technology get better and better. In fact, in comparison to some of the kids just learning, I was considered an old pioneer of robot control. Just like Ashley.
Yet, exciting as Earth was, I always missed Mars.
Our fleet was so close nowâthat after three yearsâ within 24 hours I would finally be back.
Home.
Where now it looked like immediately I'd have to help start a defense against the first attempted planetary invasion in the history of humankind.
We didn't land on Mars.
Instead, Dad hooked up our spaceship to the Habitat Lander, a shuttle permanently parked in orbit around Mars. The shuttle was designed to take passengers and equipment down to Mars from the larger spaceships that arrived from Earth.
While it was routine, it was still tricky. If Dad came into the friction of Mars' atmosphere too steeply, the heat would overcome the disposable heat shield and burn the shuttle to cinders. Too shallow, and the Habitat Lander would bounce off the atmosphere toward Jupiter.
Because of my body cast, I was the last one to get strapped in. But at least we were still in low gravity. I wasn't looking forward to being on the surface, where people would have to move me around like a piece of furniture.
By now Dad, Ashley, all the other kids in the shuttle, and I knew each other very well. Traveling through space for months in a vehicle with as much living space as a house would do that.
“Ready, guys?” Dad asked.
There were a few cheers and nods. I looked at the faces around me. All these kids had become my friends over the past several years since Ashley and I had helped rescue them. Some, like Joey, seemed nervous. Others, like Michael and Ingrid, looked excited. I reminded myself that except for Ashley and Dad, none of them had been on the red planet before.
Dad hit a few buttons. The hatchway between the shuttle and our spaceship sealed. The Habitat Lander's rockets fired softly, and the shuttle moved away from the spaceship. The spaceship would stay in orbit until the return trip to Earth.
Five minutes later, Dad aimed the nose of the Habitat Lander at the top of Mars' atmosphere.
I knew that a lot of people from the dome would be outside in a platform buggy watching the night sky anxiously for the brightness of our approaching shuttle. The supplies that came with our fleet were crucial to their survival.
If the Habitat Lander crashed, our deaths would be quick and theirs a lot slower.
I prayed, taking comfort in knowing that because of God's love for us, death isn't the worst thing that can happen to a person.
And then the bumping began as we hit the top of the atmosphere.
Dad had warned us to expect a roller-coaster ride, and he was right.
First came the tumbling around as the atmosphere thickened. Loud screaming filled the air inside the shuttle. But it wasn't any of us. It was the shrieking of the heat shield against the intense friction of Mars' atmosphere.
Next came a
clunk
and the dropping of the heat shield.
Then the
pop
of opening parachutes. It felt like a giant hand had just jerked us upward. That's when I got my first reminder of gravity after six months of weightlessness.
The roar of the retro-rockets guided our landing.
And finally, a soft
bump
as we landed.
The shuttle exploded with cheers.
I was home.
