The Prometheus Project: Stranded Part 2

"That is weird," said Ryan.

"It still doesn't make any sense to me. On every other planet we've visited the predators either hold their ground or try to attack us. And the prey animals run from us. It's the most unusual thing I've ever experienced." She shrugged. "Anyway, the last time we visited Isis was three months ago. Carl was providing security, and I took three other biologists, Bob Zubrin, Eric Morris, and Mich.e.l.le Cooper."

Ryan's eyes widened. The woman he knew as Mich.e.l.le, who worked for his mom, was Mich.e.l.le Cooper. Alyssa's mother. Regan was right. He was an idiot.

"Are you kidding me," he complained to his sister. "Mich.e.l.le is Alyssa's mom! Why did it have to be her? She pretends to be nice but I get a strong feeling she hates my guts."

"She probably thinks kids shouldn't be part of the team," replied Regan. "She doesn't like me, either. Then again," she added with a laugh, "at least I don't have a thing for her daughter."

Regan's laugh interrupted her mother in mid sentence. "What's so funny, Regan?" she said with an annoyed look on her face.

"Uh ... nothing. Sorry Mom. My mind wandered for a second. Can you repeat that?"

"As I was saying," continued Mrs. Resnick in a tone that made it clear she wasn't happy about Regan failing to pay attention to a story she had asked to hear. "Once we arrived on Isis, we took a tram out about a mile from the portal. Eric and I began observing a powerful predator that looked like a combination between a bear and a T. Rex. Mich.e.l.le took up a position lying on the ground to observe a two-legged creature, with a neck longer than a giraffe, rip fruit from a tall tree. She was surrounded by orange lava rocks and even had her feet resting on one of the larger ones. Carl was near Mich.e.l.le, keeping an eye out for trouble."

Their mother had been relaxed while she spoke about the planet and its wildlife, but she was now visibly tense. She swallowed hard. "I walked over to ask Carl a question but he didn't see me," she said. "He was watching something in the distance and he decided to jump on a lava rock, about the size of a truck tire, to get a better view."

Mrs. Resnick blew out a breath. "Only it wasn't a lava rock," she said with a visible shudder. "It was a deadly predator! Perfectly disguised and lying on its back. Carl's weight crushed its chest cavity. But it still managed to bite Carl's calf with a set of long, razor sharp teeth and then pull like a crocodile. The force of the bite and the strength of its jaws were incredible. Carl screamed in surprise and agony-a scream I'll never forget."

Mrs. Resnick stared straight ahead for several seconds and then continued, almost in a whisper. "The lower part of Carl's leg was fractured and a good part of his calf muscle was torn from the bone."

Their mother spared them a description of the blood that must have gushed or maybe even sprayed from Carl's wound, but this didn't prevent these vivid images from appearing in Ryan and Regan's minds anyway. Neither could keep their upper lips from curling up in disgust as they envisioned the attack.

"How horrible for him," said Regan earnestly.

Mrs. Resnick nodded solemnly in agreement. "At that moment I thought for sure Carl was dead."

She paused in thought, as though she were considered the incident from several different angles. "It all happened so fast," she said finally. "Almost in the blink of an eye. We had run across this same species many times before, but never in its camouflaged state. They were magnificent mimics. We had no idea they could make themselves into absolutely perfect replicas of lava rocks. When we had interacted with them, they had ignored us, like all life on Isis." She shook her head miserably. "We got careless. I got careless."

"Mom, there was nothing you could have done," insisted Ryan, realizing that as the leader of the expedition his mother still felt responsible for what had happened.

She nodded grimly, as if she wanted to agree with him but wasn't quite convinced.

"But go on," prompted Ryan eagerly. "How did Carl get away?"

An amused look crossed Mrs. Resnick's face as she realized just how poor of a place she had chosen to stop her narrative, but her expression quickly darkened as she prepared to resume. "How did Carl get away?" she repeated. "Well, the animal that was ripping his leg to shreds died almost immediately from having its chest crushed. But even in death its jaws refused to unlock. Still, Carl somehow managed to pry them open-which was remarkable considering that all the blood had made Carl's hands slippery and he had lost a lot of strength."

Mrs. Resnick shook her head. "Not that that was the end of it," she added. "Just before Carl freed himself, four other animals we had thought were lava rocks suddenly sprang to life. Including one that Mich.e.l.le was touching! She had had her feet resting on it for twenty minutes. That's how harmless they were. But not anymore. Reacting to Carl's perceived attack on their companion, they attacked back. Mich.e.l.le jerked her legs away from the animal just as its jaws snapped down on where they had been resting. If she had been just one second slower in reacting she would have lost them both. She jumped to her feet and scrambled away as fast as she could. Carl followed, although how he managed to get away after losing so much blood and having one of his legs turned into hamburger I'll never know."

"Did the animals go after them?" asked Ryan.

"Oh yes. All four of the remaining creatures did. Like enraged lions. And they didn't just go after Carl and Mich.e.l.le but after all of us." Mrs. Resnick paused. "As you might imagine, we raced for the tram. Luckily, it was only thirty yards away. We were about to reach safety when Carl turned and shot all of the animals behind us, one after the other." Strangely, instead of sounding grateful for this act of courage on Carl's part her tone was one of disgust. "He killed them all," she finished accusingly.

Ryan and Regan exchanged a confused glance. "Isn't that a good thing?" asked Regan for them both.

Mrs. Resnick shook her head. "No. Because it wasn't necessary. Carl said if he hadn't shot them they would have killed us. But he's wrong. The first two, maybe. But the last two had backed off after the shots. There is no way they could have reached us in time. He killed those out of pure revenge," she added, severe disapproval in her voice.

Ryan's eyes narrowed. He and Regan were extremely fond of the head of security. "Maybe you're right about Carl," said Ryan. "Maybe he didn't need to shoot them. But what if Carl was right? In that case, he saved your lives."

She shook her head. "No, he was out of line. I'm sure of it."

"Don't you think you're being a little hard on him, Mom?" said Ryan.

His mother didn't answer for several long seconds. "Maybe," she admitted. "It's complicated. It wasn't the creatures' fault they attacked us. We started it, after all. Yes, I know they were only unintelligent animals. As a biologist I have a great appreciation for life, but you know I'm not a vegetarian, and I've done research that has resulted in the deaths of scores of rodents over the years. But the deaths of those two animals on Isis were senseless. They were backing off and we were almost in the clear. Carl didn't kill them in the name of research, or food, or clothing. He just killed them out of hatred. Out of revenge." She paused. "I just thought Carl was better than that."

Ryan remained silent, unsure of how to respond. The parked car had become stuffy so Mrs. Resnick gave the key a half-turn and powered the windows down a few inches. Cool autumn air entered the car along with the scent of fallen leaves.

"Wait a minute," said Regan, changing the subject. "We saw Carl fairly soon after this happened. His leg seemed fine."

"We got him back to Prometheus and to a surgeon fairly quickly," said Mrs. Resnick. "And I hunted down a Med-Pen and used it on him within twenty minutes of our return."

The Prometheus team had found three of these amazing alien medical devices a year before in one of the Prometheus buildings. Cigar-shaped and resembling bloated pens, they could provide complete pain relief and perform other medical miracles such as speeding wound healing and eradicating infections. Another remarkable feature of these alien devices was that their colors and patterns changed instantly whenever they were moved. Not to match their surroundings, but to do the opposite: to stand out in sharp contrast to whatever they were near. How this was accomplished was still unknown, but the designers of these life saving devices had clearly wanted to make them easy to locate at all times, even in a clutter. The team had kept one Med-Pen to study and voted to give the other two to its two youngest members whenever they were in the city. The Resnick siblings had spent many an hour whisking the devices past different objects and watching in fascination as they changed instantly, trying to guess the counter-color and counter-pattern the devices would adopt.

"It didn't heal him instantly, of course," continued their mother, "although doctors agree that without it he would have never healed properly. But miraculously, because of the Med-Pen, Carl healed in only a few weeks. Completely and perfectly. Those devices are truly amazing. He wasn't even scarred." She considered this further and then shook her head. "At least not physically," she added gravely.

CHAPTER 4.

Collision Course

Mrs. Resnick powered the windows back up and they exited the car, each lost in their own thoughts. Mrs. Resnick's mood remained somber, but she began to snap out of it at the first security checkpoint-drawn out by the guards who, as usual, chatted pleasantly with her and the kids while they worked. The guards carefully inspected Ryan and Regan's backpacks and let them pa.s.s.

Six weeks earlier, the Med-Pen the team was studying went missing for a day. While it had only been misplaced, security had been stepped up. Now, team members were scanned and backpacks checked on the way out of Prometheus as well as in, to make sure no one left with an alien object, purposely or accidentally. Security had also installed a number of sensors that were keyed to detect chemical, material, or energy signatures that were out of the ordinary. This made it even more difficult to sneak anything of alien origin by the guards.

They next entered a structure called the decoy building. It was nothing but a sh.e.l.l that had been built around the reinforced concrete bunker that housed the Prometheus elevator. The decoy building looked normal from the outside. Its s.p.a.cious lobby even had a reception desk and a receptionist, so anyone from Proact who entered the building by mistake would not be suspicious. But anyone who wasn't part of the Prometheus Project would find it easier to break into Fort Knox than to get beyond the reception desk.

They pa.s.sed though several additional checkpoints, provided additional pa.s.swords, and had their fingerprints and retinas scanned electronically. Finally, after ten minutes, they entered the ma.s.sive Prometheus elevator, slightly larger than a three-car garage and several stories high. Their mother was upbeat by nature and her mood had now fully returned to normal.

"After what happened to Carl," broadcast Ryan as the elevator began its long descent, "I can't believe Mom and Dad are letting us go with them."

"Me either. But whatever you do, don't say anything about it and jinx us."

"You two really owe me for this, by the way," said their mother as if reading their minds. "Dad was originally against you coming with us."

"Really?" said Regan, as if she couldn't imagine anyone being so unreasonable.

"Really. I was finally able to convince him that Isis was safer than most of the planets we've let you visit, despite what happened to Carl. I reminded him that I've been on Isis eleven times before this tragic incident and I never got as much as a scratch, and not a single animal ever paid us the slightest attention-including the species that could disguise themselves as lava rocks. I pointed out that the few individuals from this species that finally did react to us only did so because Carl crushed one of them-and none of these survived to hold a grudge."

"Sounds safe to me," agreed Regan enthusiastically.

"Well, as safe as any primitive planet can ever be, I suppose. But even so, we'll be taking precautions. We're bringing a portable force-field generator, just in case. And the guards going with us will have guns-this time filled with tranquilizer darts," she added pointedly, intent on ensuring that no further senseless killing of Isis wildlife would be possible, regardless of the provocation. "But whatever you do," she instructed her children firmly, "don't step on any lava rocks."

Ryan rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Mom," he said sarcastically. "If you hadn't warned us just now that would have been the first thing I did."

At last the elevator stopped and they stepped off into a ma.s.sive, manmade cavern, the size of a baseball stadium, illuminated by powerful electric lights and filled with machinery and high-tech equipment. They said a warm h.e.l.lo to two heavily armed guards, both dressed casually. Carl had not wanted Prometheus turned into a military base and insisted the members of his security team not wear uniforms or use military t.i.tles. In fact, everyone on the team used first names with each other, decorated colonels and n.o.bel Prize winning chemists alike. Dr. Harris was the only exception, despite his objections, because he was the head of the entire project.

They entered the city through a rainbow-colored section of the force-field wall their father had managed to hold open with a furious onslaught of precisely tuned energy.

"So is Dad just coming to keep us company?" asked Regan.

"Actually, it's his expedition. I decided to go and bring along some of my staff to keep him company." Amanda and Ben Resnick were among the first few members of the Prometheus Project and had recruited dozens of scientists who now worked for them.

"I don't get it," said Regan. "You're the one who studies alien life. What does a physicist want with a primitive planet?"

"Isis is about 25,000 light years away. Less than 900 light years from a ma.s.sive black hole in the center of our galaxy."

A light year was the distance light could travel in a year. And since light was insanely fast, screaming along at 670 million miles per hour, 25,000 light years was some serious distance. Einstein had shown that nothing in the universe could travel faster than light-but obviously the Qwervy had found ways to circ.u.mvent this rule with their portals.

"According to your father, when stars are sucked into black holes and annihilated, X-rays are emitted into s.p.a.ce. He's calculated that the X-rays from one of these events that happened many, many years ago will be close enough to Isis for him to measure sometime tomorrow or Sunday. He says this data has the potential to greatly enhance our understanding of black holes. He'll set up the equipment tonight, and baby-sit it for the rest of the weekend to make sure nothing goes wrong." Mrs. Resnick shook her head and an amused smile crossed her face. "He's pretty excited about it."

"Who wouldn't be?" teased Regan, unable to keep a straight face.

Her mother's smile broadened. "Since the animal life on Isis is so interesting," she continued, "and since I haven't had time to return since the incident, I thought we could make it a family outing. With a few others along for the ride. It'll be fun."

The familiar rows of fast, oversized electric-powered golf-carts were parked beside the entrance along with a half dozen electric trucks. The trucks were huge, with expansive cargo beds. They were called Haulers by the team since they were used to haul heavy scientific equipment around Prometheus. Despite their size their electric engines were almost whisper quiet. The trio jumped into a large golf-cart at the end of the row. This time Regan took the front seat next to their mother while Ryan took the back.

They drove past buildings that s.h.i.+mmered and others that changed colors depending on the angle from which they were viewed. Buildings that appeared to be floating and others that sparkled brilliantly as though made of diamonds. The city was magnificent. No matter how often the kids visited they continued to find it awe-inspiring.

Several minutes later their mother stopped the cart in front of a four-story building in the shape of a complex three-dimensional snowflake. "I need to speak with Lou Holmgren," she announced. "Wait here. This should only take a few minutes. Then we'll go see the Enigma Cube."

As they waited, one of the buildings off in the distance began changing shape, something that was always fun to watch. They exited the cart and walked toward one edge of the snowflake building to get a better view.

"Hold on," said Regan when they were ten feet from the building's edge. "I need to tie my shoe." She knelt down to begin tying.

Ryan turned toward her to ask her a question.

And then a low hum hit his ears. The hum from a Hauler!

Ryan's heart jumped to his throat! He turned back around just in time to see a ma.s.sive runaway Hauler shoot around the corner of the building. It was headed right for them!

The driver-a scientist who had been working around the clock for days-had fallen asleep at the wheel. Ryan absorbed the entire situation in an instant, but it was too late.

Before he could begin to warn his sister or launch himself out of the way, the twelve-ton vehicle was on them.

Ryan didn't even have time to close his eyes as the Hauler slammed into his chest.

CHAPTER 5.

The Enigma Cube

The exact instant the Hauler made contact with Ryan's sweats.h.i.+rt, he felt a powerful force acting on his body that he couldn't possibly describe, threatening to pull him apart. And then the driver's face was less than a foot in front of him.

Impossible! The front of the Hauler should have crushed his chest and thrown him under the tires already.

Even more impossible, he could see inside the driver's face!

Ryan could clearly see his brain, a three-pound ma.s.s of wrinkly material. He could see the backs of his eyeb.a.l.l.s; huge orbs set into his skull, riddled with a complex network of blood vessels. And he could see inside of the blood vessels as well. And inside of the individual cells that made up the blood. And he could see through the truck to the driver's chest, and through this to his heart, and through this to his cells. He could see all of this in a single instant, and knew that his mind couldn't hold it all in and would soon become overloaded.

And then the truck was past him! Instantly his vision returned to normal.

With a start, the driver of the Hauler awakened and jerked the wheel to straighten the vehicle. Realizing he had dozed off for several seconds, he shook himself awake and drove on, completely unaware he had just hit two kids.

Only he hadn't. He had pa.s.sed right through them.

Ryan felt faint and dropped to a sitting position on the ground next to Regan as the Hauler receded in the distance. Both were now white as ghosts-which is apparently what they and the truck had become.

"How can we be alive?" said Regan, her heart pounding thunderously in her ears. "I looked up and the Hauler was on us. We didn't have a chance."

Ryan nodded. "Just as it hit us, it became transparent somehow." He paused. "No, that's not the word for it. It became, I don't know-not solid. Like a cloud or something. I think we did too."

Regan nodded her agreement. "It was so freaky. I could see inside the tires. And inside the front hood-I could see the engine. And inside the engine. Somehow we and the truck pa.s.sed right through each other."

Both kids looked down and pressed on their arms and stomachs, half expecting their hands to pa.s.s through their bodies.

"Well, we're solid enough now," said Ryan. "And the truck became solid again once it pa.s.sed us." He shuddered as the memory of the ma.s.sive steel Hauler bearing down on him replayed itself in his mind. Never before had he felt so totally helpless and so certain that he had taken his last breath.

"That was like some kind of miracle," said Regan, shaking her head in disbelief.

"Yeah," said Ryan, nodding thoughtfully. "It was." The slightest of smiles played over his face as he reached an inescapable conclusion. "So who do we know that can pull off miracles?"

The answer came to Regan immediately. "The Teacher," she whispered, her eyes widening. Of course! The city's central computer-so advanced it made a human supercomputer seem like a primitive adding machine. There could be no doubt it had saved them from certain death.