Marooned! Read online

  “One thing we can do to begin with,” Sean said, “is to round up all our wrist locators. The first thing they’ll check will be the GPS system. I’ve got an idea about that.”

  Alex and Leslie took all twenty of the wrist devices to the point farthest from the dorm wings, the factory domes where the colonists refined steel from the iron in the Martian rocks. They activated all the locators and left them in the observation room on the top of the most distant factory dome, along with a note that they all had signed:

  To the Marsport Council:

  We have decided to stay on Mars. There is nothing on Earth for any of us. We believe that since the Asimov Project began four years ago, we have proved our value to the colony and our ability to do our part. If any colonists are going to take a stand here, we want to be part of that stand. We don’t want to cause trouble, and we are not rebelling for the sake of rebellion. We ask your acceptance, but with it or without it, we are part of Marsport and will remain here with any colonists who decide to stay.

  Mickey Goldberg had shaken his head as he read the note before signing it. “Not exactly the Declaration of Independence, is it?”

  “It says what we want to say,” Jenny told him. “And what’s more important, we’ve all signed it.”

  Mickey had added his name, and then the note went into hiding with the wrist locators.

  As soon as everyone was together, Sean said, “The room locators are the big problem. We can’t play hide-and-seek when each room has sensors that can tell them if people are inside.”

  “Not necessarily,” Jenny said thoughtfully. “There are a couple of corridors that don’t have that kind of detector, because they’re cut back into the surface of the planet. They were the first storage areas when Marsport was started. Now they’re used for emergency supplies—rations, medical stuff, things like that. But we can’t get to them without going through the corridors, and we’d be noticed.”

  “How about the greenhouses?” Patrick asked.

  Jenny shook her head. “No good. There’s just no cover there. They’ve got carbon dioxide detectors, and we all have to breathe.”

  “If we wore pressure suits—”

  “We’d have the built-in suit locators,” Mickey said wearily.

  Sean was thinking furiously. He knew there was a way. But what was it?

  “I’m going to get killed for this,” Nickie Mikhailova muttered in a despairing voice. She was feverishly working with her private minicomputer. “I think I can tie into the communications net without being detected, but it’s against all kinds of rules.”

  “So’s hiding out when you’ve been ordered to leave the colony,” Roger pointed out.

  It was late, far past the normal lights-out hour, but colonists all over Marsport were still up, pondering and arguing their choices. Time was running short. In seven hours, it would be 8:00, and at that time the Asimov Project kids were supposed to report to the council to prepare for their evacuation.

  Sean paced, as he always did when faced with a serious problem. He kept feeling that he had missed something obvious.

  And then he remembered the day that the dust devils had knocked out power to the station. He whirled. “I’ve got it!” he yelled. Then he bit his lip.

  “Nickie, when’s the latest possible launch date for the Argosy?”

  “Five days,” Nickie responded at once. “End of the week, just as Dr. Simak said. After that they’d have to delay for months before launching.”

  “We need emergency rations for five days. How much water will we need at a minimum?”

  Jenny shrugged. “Five days? Three liters each would just about see us through.”

  “Then let’s start collecting water. We can’t tap into the system, or they could trace us. Okay, I need five people to collect sixty liters of water and five to collect emergency rations. Who’s up for it?”

  Sean had his pick of volunteers. “Be careful not to get caught,” he warned them. “Water committee, collect from all the dorm wings—we don’t want to make anyone suspicious by taking that much water from one place. Alex, come with me. We have to check something out.”

  Sean and Alex hurried through the corridors, passing domes where worried adults were still talking about the crisis. No one paid the teens much attention. They reached the tube that led into the tunnels, and there Sean stopped, studying the floor. “How do the service panels lift out?” he asked.

  Alex understood at once. “You have to have a code key,” he said. “There’s an access panel by the door. Punch in the code and the conduit cover hatch opens.”

  Sean growled in frustration. “I thought I had it!”

  “Hang on,” Alex said. “I doubt they’ve changed the codes. I watched some repair work months ago. Let me see if I can remember.” He opened the access panel, revealing a keypad. “It was a long time ago,” he said doubtfully.

  “How many numbers?” Sean asked.

  “Four, but—”

  Sean studied the pad. This was one of the oldest corridors in the colony, and the pad had been there a long time. The numbers showed uneven wear—and the numbers 1, 5, 8, and 9 had been pressed so many times that the numerals were barely visible. “Must be a combination of these,” Sean said, reading them out.

  “That sounds familiar,” Alex said. “Think if we try all the combinations we’ll trigger an alarm or something?”

  “We can’t take that chance,” Sean said. “What’s the trick? There’s got to be some reason for those four numbers.”

  “If it was up to me, I’d spell out the word ‘Mars,’” Alex said. “But the only number you could use would be the one, because M is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, R is the eighteenth, and S the nineteenth.”

  “That’s it!” Sean said excitedly. “I’ll bet it does spell ‘Mars,’ but you go around twice. Hang on, let me see.” Without quite touching the buttons, Sean recited the alphabet as he pointed to each one. The zero represented J, and then he went back to 1 for the K But he pulled up short. “Rats. M would be 3, and that one looks practically new compared to the 1, 5, 8, and 9.”

  “Maybe its just a random number.”

  Sean shook his head. “That’s not the way colonists think. I mean, look at how they decided to name the airplanes: ‘Martian Aerial Reconnaissance/Survey craft,’ just so they could get the letters M, A, R, and S. I’d bet anything that there’s something like that going on here, too.”

  Alex said thoughtfully, “You know, when we were having our orientation, Dr. Czernos said not to call him a geologist, because ‘geo’ means ‘Earth.’ He’s an Areologist, because the Greek name for Mars is—”

  “Ares,” Sean finished. “Let’s see—” His pointing finger danced over the keypad again. “It works!” he said. “That would make the code 1895. Does that sound familiar?”

  “I think that’s it,” Alex said.

  “I’m going to try it.” Sean hesitated for just a second. He took a deep breath and punched the numbers in. They heard a faint click, and Alex knelt and pressed the edge of one of the access panels. It tilted down, and in a moment he had lifted it up, revealing the three-foot-wide conduit.

  Alex grinned up at Sean. “This is our way in. There won’t be any sensors down in this trench. We can unlatch the panels manually from the inside, and we can even refasten this one. Think it will work?”

  “It has to,” Sean said. “Let’s get the others.”

  CHAPTER 10

  10.1

  It was a nerve-racking night. In groups of two and three, each group carrying supplies and water, the Doe Crew slipped through the corridors, taking different routes to the tube outside the tunnels. Then they slipped into the service conduit and crept half the length of a football field to the last storage area, really a cavern blasted out of the bedrock. It was dark, cold, and deserted. This particular storage area held crates of tools.

  “Should’ve brought a heater,” grumbled Jenny, hugging herself. “They don’t do much to keep these
above freezing.”

  Sean said, “We’ll keep close together. Okay, we have to keep watch, and we have to make a few decisions. One is bathroom facilities. We could sneak back into the colony, but I don’t think that’s a good plan. Any ideas?”

  Mickey offered, “Easiest thing to do is to use a couple of chemical pails. We’ll say the area behind these crates is the boys’ and the one behind those is the girls’.”

  “Only thing is we’ll have to take them with us when we move,” Sean said.

  “When we move?” Leslie asked, looking puzzled.

  Patrick turned to her. “They’re sure to search this place,” he said. “But when they’re on the way in, we’ll slip down into the conduit and go the other way, to a room they’ve already searched. Right, Cap’n Doe?”

  “You got it,” Sean said. “And I’m trusting Nickie to let us know when a patrol is coming.”

  “Nobody’d better spill a chemical toilet on me,” Nickie said in a grumpy voice. “We Russians consider that a great insult.”

  “We Poles aren’t too crazy about it, either,” Jenny told her.

  10.2

  Nickie’s computer picked up the communication link. Most of the Doe Crew were grabbing some sleep when Nickie sought out Sean. “They know we’re missing,” she reported. “They’re sending out calls for us. They’ll be tracking the GPS bracelets when we don’t respond.”

  It was 10:31 on the first day of their deadly serious game of hide-and-seek.

  Nickie was asleep and Jenny was watching the computer when the search party found the locator bracelets and the note they had left. Nickie told the others that Dr. Simak had issued an order that they return to their dorms immediately.

  They had lunch instead.

  That afternoon the computer told them that a three-person search party was headed toward them. One by one they dropped into the conduit, Sean going last and latching the cover above him. They all wriggled and slid down to the first storage area as the search party walked right over them.

  They had been careful. No one suffered from a toilet spill.

  And it went like that for the next five days….

  CHAPTER 11

  11.1

  Nickie’s face was ghostly in the reflected glow of her tiny computer. Sean felt his heart racing. Part of it was the air—the atmosphere in the storage area was not as oxygen-rich as in the domes, and over the last few days they all had begun to feel headachy and groggy. Most of his discomfort, though, was nerves. He ached to ask Nickie what was happening, what decision had been reached, but they knew that adults were prowling the corridors again, making a desperate last sweep for the Asimov Project kids. Sean felt Jenny at his shoulder and could tell that she was just as tense as he was.

  The others huddled together, shivering. Sean guessed it was eight or nine degrees in this storage compartment. “Is the heat completely off?” Jenny asked through chattering teeth.

  “No,” Sean whispered. “Just feels like it. But they can’t let this storage area drop below freezing. There’s medicine stored here. If it freezes, it would break the containers. This is as cold as it’s going to get.”

  “Wish we could have some light,” someone muttered. “Seems like we’ve been in the dark for—”

  “Shh!” Nickie’s quiet hiss.

  Sean tried to force himself to breathe more normally. His arms were cold, his fingers nearly numb. He felt Mars was determined to freeze him into a solid block of ice. He wondered how many colonists were still searching for them. Not too many, with the Argosy racing to load any colonists who wanted to return to Earth. Soon there would be an anxious rush that would make searching impossible.

  But—Sean swallowed hard—what if that wasn’t happening at all? What if Dr. Simak had decided that the ship had to wait for the next departure window, in six months? There was no way his crew could hold out for that long.

  “Okay,” Nickie said in little more than a whisper. Sean sensed everyone leaning toward her, straining to hear. “Status report on the Argosy is finally coming through. The ship is loaded and—” Silence. Then, in an unbelieving voice: “Sean, they’re taking a hundred and seventy-six passengers! That’s all!”

  “Has to be a mistake,” someone said. “It’s supposed to be over six hundred!”

  Nickie didn’t glance away from the tiny screen. “No mistake. Only a hundred and seventy-six volunteers. The rest have all decided to stay.”

  “My kind of people,” Roger whispered. “The daring, dashing, brainless kind!”

  Sean took a deep breath. “Most of them know there’s not likely to be much on Earth to return to.”

  “Any word on the launch?” Jenny asked.

  “Argosy is already cleared to leave orbit. Planet command has just turned nav and command control over to the ship’s crew.”

  “What if this is a trick?” asked Mickey Goldberg, his voice suspicious. “They may be trying to fake us out.”

  Sean shook his head before he realized that Mickey couldn’t see him in the dark. “I don’t think they realize we can tap into their net. If we didn’t know what was going on, there’d be no point to a trick.”

  “They’re about to launch!” Nickie said, her voice surprisingly loud in the darkness, edged with her excitement. “They can’t turn back now. Less than a minute to go—”

  Light flooded the compartment, cutting Nickie short, blinding them all.

  “Here you are.”

  Sean shivered, not from the cold. Dr. Ellman had found them.

  And he sounded far from happy.

  11.2

  The twenty young people of the Doe Crew stood miserably together, warmer than they had been in days but even more uncomfortable. The common area outside the Administration offices was hardly large enough for them to squeeze into, and with Dr. Ellman, Lieutenant Mpondo, and Dr. Simak glaring at them, the space seemed even smaller.

  “You have caused us a great deal of trouble,” Dr. Simak said, pacing as much as she could—two steps forward, two back.

  Alex nudged Sean. “I wondered where you’d picked up that pacing habit,” he whispered.

  “You will be silent!” Behind Dr. Simak, Ellman could hardly contain his anger. His face was so red it was almost glowing. “What punishment do you recommend this time, Doctor Simak?” he demanded, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “It has to be more than confinement to quarters!”

  Mpondo said mildly, “I don’t think we can shoot them.”

  Dr. Simak closed her eyes. “Please! I’m tired and this is no time for bickering. Yes, Dr. Ellman, their punishment will be more severe than confinement to quarters. It will be confinement to the planet.”

  Ellman spluttered.

  Dr. Simak raised a hand. “I didn’t want these young people to face the uncertainty and danger that we have all agreed to face. However, that decision is now out of my hands.” Looking directly at Sean, she continued. “We’ve heard from the L5 outposts and from the lunar colony. They have all agreed to hang on. There are fewer than ten thousand colonists in space, everything counted—space stations, lunar colony, and us. We’re going to survive for as long as it takes. Reports from Earth are not encouraging. At best, it will be one year—one Martian year, mind you—until the Magellan rescue ship can hope to launch from lunar orbit to return to Mars. Then it will be months until it could possibly arrive here. And even then—well, you know how limited that ship’s capacity is. Like it or not, we’re stranded here for the foreseeable future. I don’t know how long it will take Earth to recover from this collapse, but until that time, our mission is simply to survive as best we can.”

  Mpondo added somberly, “The odds are against us. Unless we can tap new sources, we’ll use up our water supply in a matter of months, even with full recycling. We have to protect our power generating facilities at all costs, or else we’ll freeze to death. Food is marginal. If everything holds together, the greenhouses should barely provide for us. But one crop failure means we starve. We have no reser
ves, and we can’t expect resupply from Earth.”

  “We know that,” Sean blurted.

  “And we don’t care,” added Jenny, stepping up to stand beside him. “It’s our decision. We’re going to stay.”

  “You will work,” warned Mpondo. “We have to survive at all costs. That means no free rides. You’ll all work harder than you ever have in your lives. You will continue your education, but you’ll also have to pull a shift, just like every other colonist.”

  “That’s fine,” Sean said, his chin up. “We didn’t expect anything else.”

  “Very well,” Dr. Simak said. “Sean, you stay for a moment. The rest of you are dismissed. Get some food and some rest. You’re going to need it.”

  “You can say anything to us that you’re going to say to Sean,” Mickey objected. “We’re all in this together.”

  “I know that,” Dr. Simak responded resignedly. “But Sean is in my foster care, and the rest of you are not. You’re dismissed.”

  They filed out quietly, with Mpondo and Ellman the last to go. Sean met Ellman’s glare as the heavyset man looked back over his shoulder. His sour expression promised that Sean in particular was going to have a hard time in the future.

  “Come into my office, Sean,” Amanda said at last. She pulled her chair from behind her desk and motioned Sean into the visitor’s chair. She sat facing him, reached out, and took both of his hands in hers. “How did you know this was coming?” she asked.

  Sean blinked. “The collapse on Earth?”

  “You’ve talked about this before. You seemed to know it was coming even when the leaders on Earth were saying things were looking up. What told you that this disaster was about to happen?” Amanda stared intently into his eyes.

  With a shrug, Sean said, “That’s my only talent, I think. I can guess at trends and outcomes better than most people. For over two years now, I’ve been feeling that something drastic was going to happen on Earth, but I didn’t know just what. That’s why I wanted to be here.” He paused and then added, “And I wanted to stay with you.”