Chapter 13
A Tomb in the Rocks
Chapter 13
Inside the chamber, Joey made sure the inner door was closed. He didn’t know if the chewed snack block would stay stuck to the buzzer long, but it was easier to verify the exposed latch was secure from inside. He unhooked his Angel from the wall and the sanitation systems. He pressed the snack block onto the ridged pin next to the waterspout of the “snack bar” under the helmet seals.
The procedures for donning the suit were as familiar as walking. But Joey followed the steps printed on the airlock wall with elaborate care. He checked each clasp and seal, then checked them again, and again. Olly did not check his equipment and it cost him dearly. I am not an Olly, Joey thought. Olly never went off asteroid, but if he had, he wouldn’t have checked his equipment like Joey did.
Even with his justification secure, if there was something more stupid Joey could be doing right now, he couldn’t imagine it. This would be the first time he’d been out of his apartment without his dad knowing. He felt fear. Not the fear of the rogue asteroid passing overhead, or of the violence of the Trojans. This fear he chose. This fear was exciting.
He hit the large red button. The air pumped out of the chamber and his world went silent. His breathing and the quiet hum of the Angel’s life support were the only sounds. When he moved, the suit creaked, the metal fittings slid against each other. Unless he ran into Stan, those sounds were going to be his only companions for the next few days.
He had to shove the outer airlock door open, its hinges still gritty with regolith. Of course they were. Because he hadn’t cleaned them. He would have cleaned them as part of his morning chores. But in the morning, he would be gone.
He leaned his head out the doorway and looked up and down the row of apartments. He expected to see foremen patrolling or standing guard. But there were none.
He stepped over the threshold and planted his first unauthorized step outside.
What would a foreman do if they saw him? What would Joey say? Strict rules about being out at night were never discussed. Everyone stayed in as far as he knew, and they did so without needing to be told. Fear of reffies ensured that. Besides, the work was tiring, and neither Joey nor his dad ever stayed up late. Rules or not, something told him to not treat this excursion like his morning walk to work. He wouldn’t be counting to pass the time. He was too keyed up.
Hung from the overhead cargo straps were blue-white globe lights. They were dimmer than normal, and their glow barely penetrated the black of the night. But still, if a patrolling foreman looked down the path, Joey would be spotted. Outside his bedroom window the ground was always dark, so he slipped through the narrow gap between apartments to get to the other side. He could hardly see his own boots now, and he dared not turn on the AGLS’s work lights. The Mushroom was there in the distance, and just beyond was the first stop on this foolish trek.
He waved his hands in front of him; each step he took was cautious and probing. The cargo straps came off the apartments at forty-five degrees and were anchored to thick hooks set in concrete blocks. In the dim light, it would be very easy to trip over them. His tense breathing and thumping heart were all he could hear.
At the end of the row of apartments Joey leaned around the corner, again expecting patrolling foremen and seeing none. Joey followed the main path to the crater, staying just outside the glow of the low marker lights. As he got closer to the Mushroom he walked farther into the darkness. There was no way to tell if there was someone in the control room looking down on him. Without patrols, that would be the only way they could spot reffies.
Joey saw a surprisingly short foreman under the dome of the Mushroom. At first Joey was relieved. At least someone watched for reffies. But the foreman paced in circles like a bored child. Joey smiled. The foreman wouldn’t be paying attention to the dig site.
Still avoiding the light, Joey worked his way to the recharge station. Each time the foreman’s lazy circle put his back to Joey, the boy jogged.
The recharge station was dark. And the hum that vibrated the soles of Joey’s boots wasn’t there. Now what? All he ever did was plug the charge hose into his suit. The hoses had no other interface. Once connected, they did what they did automatically. When it was on.
There must be some sort of control panel. Unless it was operated from the Mushroom. If it was, his trip would be over.
He checked along the side of the hulking box. Under a set of gauges, he found a metal panel a little bigger than his gloved hand. It had no handles or visible latches. Things that had to be handled with pressurized gloves usually had simple operations. Joey shrugged and pushed in on the panel. He felt a soft click and the panel swung down. Inside were two large silicone-wrapped buttons. One red, one green. He took a deep breath.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to pass this up.”
Stan stepped from behind the recharge station. This time it was his friend, but if Joey didn’t keep his eyes open, he’d end up in a reffie’s stew.
“Well, I was going to…” Joey shrugged.
“And now you’re going to go without me? I’ve been pacing around the Mushroom for an hour.”
“I thought you was a foreman.”
Stan nodded.
“Fair enough. But what’s your plan? How were you going to go?”
“You sound like a foreman.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to. I’m actually curious.”
“I figured out the map,” Joey said. “What all the dots and circles and lines mean. See. Before they stole the tile, I drew a picture of it. Every little part.”
Joey opened his notebook. Stan smiled at the drawings as Joey flipped through the pages.
“The dots are the asteroids, right? These two bigger ones, here and here. The lower one is us, RN-3a. The other one is that tomb thing.”
“Impressive.”
“You mean that?”
“I do. But there are some things you didn’t account for,” Stan said, pointing at a wrist-thick insulated line that ran from the pumps. “See this cable? It’s a monitoring line. If you’d turned this beast on, it would have lit up the control room in the tower.”
“I was worried about that.”
Stan smiled with pride.
“No need to worry. I disabled that system before I left. And fortunately for both of us, I spent the last several hours calculating the current positions of the asteroids. Even in the achingly slow time of the cosmos, the asteroids should have moved a lot in a thousand years, but somehow they didn’t. Do you know what that means?”
Joey shook his head. There was almost nothing Stan had said that made sense to him.
“Me neither,” Stan said with a shrug. “Either the asteroids haven’t changed their relative positions in a thousand years, or the dots on the artifact are moving with them.”
“Which is it?”
“Both of them are absurd. So pick whatever absurdity you like best. Did you know that the rogue asteroid actually changed the speed at which this rock spins?”
Joey shook his head.
“And it should have slowed our speed around the sun. Not a lot, but enough to cause RN-3a to fall out of orbit in a million years.”
“That sounds like Joey Junior, Junior, Junior, Junior’s problem.”
“It’s weird, is what it is. Because it didn’t happen despite what the computers said should happen.”
Is it worth telling him I don’t understand again? Joey wondered.
“But,” Stan said, “not to worry about that either way. I’ve programmed the whole trip into my arm computer.”
Joey frowned at his drawing. He’d been very proud about figuring out the map, but he had something else exciting planned. An idea inspired by the comic book. I guess my dad should have got me something based on chapter four.
“Okay. The big question. Who’s driving the rock runner? Or are we taking the cycles?”
“Sorry, none of those will work.”
“What? Why?”
“First, they’re not easy to operate. It takes a year of training to become a pilot.”
Joey sagged.
“But that’s not the main reason.”
“Oh?”
“They have tracking beacons. As soon as they know one is missing, they zero in on its position.”
“All you keep telling me is how nothing is gonna work. Since you don’t like my plan. What do we do?”
“It’ll be easier to show you. And for the record, I like your plan. The rock runner would get us there in half a day. But there’s a bright side.”
Joey wasn’t satisfied.
“Trust me. It will be a grand adventure.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“In books, people are always going on big trips to foreign lands. Fighting monsters and stuff.”
“I’ve only read The Book.”
“Oh,” Stan said. He was quiet for a long moment. Then he shrugged and said, “Let’s go.”
With a grandiose flourish, Stan reached into the control box and pressed the green button. It lit up, and the low hum traveled through the soles of Joey’s boots. Small indicator lights illuminated each hanging hose as they came online.
The dangerous excitement surged as Joey snapped the charging hose into the front of his suit. The familiar click and rush of humidified air fogged his helmet. And as the fog faded, it was as if he walked through a door opened to the whole universe.
The fog in Stan’s helmet faded. Their eyes met, and the two boys knew they were committed to this.
I am not Olly, Joey thought. But he was not convinced.