Captured (The Prometheus Project Book 2) (12 page)

Regan paused to see if her brother had any questions.

“Go on,” he said.

“Also, while some planets have more trams than others, and they come in a variety of sizes, they all work the same way and have the same design. Dad was convinced the Qwervy wouldn’t go to all the trouble of having different nullifiers for every different planet. He figured it would be far simpler for them to engineer the force-field barriers
themselves
to detect trams and let them pass. When a tram approached, the barrier would detect it and create a hole in itself for a second to let it through. The technology for this would be in the force-field, not the tram. He was so sure of his reasoning, and so busy, he never took the time to test it—besides, he had already created an opening in the Prometheus shield that was working really well.”

Ryan frowned. “He never did test his hypothesis, I’ll give you that. And he’s the one always saying how important that is. He says scientists can’t make assumptions. They need to test every hypothesis, even the ones they think are obvious.”

“Exactly,” said Regan. “That’s all I’m asking. That we test it. Because I’m convinced he’s wrong. I’ve thought
about it a totally different way and come up with a totally different answer. Let me ask you this: why is there a force-field barrier around this city in the first place?”

“To protect it,” replied Ryan.

“From what?”

“From us.”

Regan shook her head. “Isn’t the shield really there to protect
us
?
From the city?
The Qwervy wanted to be absolutely certain we primitives wouldn’t get in and accidentally hurt ourselves. Just like locking a gun away from a bunch of kids protects
them
.”

Ryan nodded. She was right, of course.

“Dad thinks of the field as a two-way barrier,” she continued. “Made to be very difficult to open in
either
direction. And no one knows better than Dad how remarkable the barrier really is. He admits that it practically took a miracle for him to discover a way to break through it.” She paused. “But the city is off limits to all but a few authorized observers selected from the Qwervy and a few other advanced species. Wouldn’t they make it easy for
themselves
to exit? They’d make it nearly impossible to
enter
—to keep us out—but someone already inside should be able to get out, easily, anytime they wanted,” she insisted. “Maybe they would need to have a small device, or need to know a code, or maybe they would just have to ask the Teacher to create an exit telepathically.”

Ryan considered. He had never thought about it this way, but Regan was making perfect sense.

“One of the reasons Dr Harris agreed to let us be part of the Prometheus Project,” she continued, “is because kids aren’t afraid to consider ideas adults have been taught to think are crazy or impossible. All of Dad’s instincts and training tell him that the barrier is supposed to be just as difficult to exit as to enter. And human science could never build a tram garage-door opener that could work on thousands of force-field barriers, all with different frequencies. Human science was barely able to find a way through a single one, and even that took more equipment than could fit inside
three
trams. But so what?” she demanded. “Surely the Qwervy could pull it off. Just because Dad thinks it’s impossible, doesn’t mean the Qwervy can’t do it.”

She had a point there, Ryan had to admit. The Qwervy seemed to have a habit of doing the impossible. So why not? As he gazed at the fiery resolve in his sister’s green eyes, he knew he had to give her the benefit of the doubt. If he had learned anything during the past several months it was to trust his sister’s instincts.

He agreed to work with her to try to locate a nullifier, but only for thirty minutes or so. If they couldn’t find one in that period of time they would need to abandon their efforts and make another attempt to rescue the prisoners.

They hurried to the zoo and rushed through a portal. They found themselves on a planet with three visible moons. In its reddish sky floated balloon-like animals the size of whales. Resembling massive jellyfish in the sky, they drifted through dense swarms of gnat-like insects, miles and miles across, sucking up many millions of the tiny creatures as they passed, like living vacuum cleaners. The two visitors forced themselves to turn away from this remarkable spectacle. There was no time for sightseeing.

The siblings quickly found a tram and activated its holographic display. They examined every hologram in front of them for several minutes but couldn’t find anything that pointed them in the right direction.

“Time for plan B,” said Ryan, holding up the hammer he had brought with him. “You know what the scientists have told us: sometimes, the best way to learn what something does is to take it apart.”

“I think they meant taking it apart very gently and carefully, step by step,” quipped Regan with a grin. “Not bashing it to pieces with a hammer.”

Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “We’re in a hurry,” he said innocently. “Besides,” he added playfully, “I’m pretty sure all of humanity’s greatest scientific discoveries were made using a hammer.”

With that they began their experiment. They drove the tram to the edge of the force-field and Ryan demolished pieces of it, one at a time. After each piece was
smashed, they would quickly determine if the tram could still drive through the barrier. If so, they would back it up, smash another piece, and try again.

After twenty minutes of this, Ryan smashed one of the last pieces remaining on the inside of the tram, a light-red crystal medallion extending down like a circular rear-view mirror.

Regan moved the tram forward.

It slammed into the barrier and stopped!

Regan tried again. Again, the barrier remained firmly intact.

Ryan’s eyes widened. Destroying the reddish crystal medallion destroyed the ability of the tram to get through the barrier. It was as simple as that.

Now full of excitement, they dashed back through the portal to the zoo and then on to another planet with a fully intact tram. They quickly spotted the same light-red crystal. This time, instead of destroying it, they worked to carefully remove it fully intact.

After only a few minutes it was free. Regan placed it in her pocket. She jumped from the tram and nodded to her brother.

Ryan moved the tram forward.

And it was stopped by the barrier!

Remarkable.

Regan approached the barrier with the crystal in her pocket. She took a step forward and walked right through the field.

It worked! There
was
a garage-door opener, and they had found it.

She had been right! The mechanism for lowering the barrier was in the tram rather than being in the barrier. They had found a nullifier. But the big question was, would it work on all the force-fields or only this particular one?

They returned to the zoo and hastily stepped through another portal to a different planet—this one covered with massive volcanoes—and a different barrier.

Regan approached the edge of the force-field with the medallion in her pocket. She took a deep breath and raised her foot to march forward. Would the medallion be able to nullify this field—one with a different frequency than the field it had just nullified?

There was only one way to find out.

“Cross your fingers, Ryan,” she said nervously, knowing that their fate might very well depend on what happened between her last footfall and her next.

C
HAPTER
17
A Thorny Puzzle

R
egan completed her stride, unhindered.

The barrier melted away before the medallion in her pocket.

“Unbelievable,” said Ryan. “Congratulations Regs. You know what this means, don’t you?”

Regan nodded. “It means we have our bargaining chip.”

“No,” he said, grinning. “It means Dad was
wrong. About something scientific
. That doesn’t happen every day.”

Regan laughed, even though they both knew that their father would be more proud of her than anyone for having proven him wrong.

Ryan glanced at his watch. “It’s been over five hours since Tezoc made his threat,” he reported. “We’d better go.”

They left the zoo and headed back toward the invaders’ headquarters in the Hauler with Ryan at the wheel. Even though they had been bluffing at the time, they had made the deal with Manning to try to find the nullifier, so they would return to him. Besides, they couldn’t be sure that Manning had even mentioned them to Tezoc. For all they knew, Tezoc would shoot them on sight if they went to where their father was working.

“Ryan,” said Regan worriedly after they had started out. “Finding the nullifier makes me nervous. I think we’ve been missing something about Tezoc. Something is wrong. I can feel it. Something huge.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t know how to exit this city,” she replied. “I was right—there
are
fairly simple ways to exit. We found one. And I bet there are many others. Tezoc is just too smart, too good a planner, to have brought the wrong technology with him. He knows this city inside and out. And while his people aren’t as advanced as the Qwervy, they’re more advanced than we are. He was smart enough to break out of a prison no other of his kind had ever broken out of, but his entire plan might fail because he brought the wrong key with him?” She paused. “I just don’t believe that,” she finished emphatically.

Ryan thought about this and frowned. “So then what’s going on? What could he gain by pretending not to be able to leave here? Why threaten Dad?”

“We’re missing something important,” insisted Regan.

“Maybe we should back up and try to think about this from the very beginning.”

“Well, Tezoc captured Mom and Dad, and they said they wouldn’t be back in the city until about six this morning. So the invasion probably happened around then,” she said confidently.

Ryan nodded. “You’re right. But I wanted to go all the way back to last Friday, when we got the telepathic warning about an unauthorized entry. Eight days ago. Tezoc must have been the cause. I’ll bet that’s when he first arrived.”

Regan considered. They hadn’t thought about this for a while. “And also exactly when we stopped being able to feel the Teacher,” she reminded her brother.

“That’s right,”
said Ryan, his eyes widening. For a week now they had been thinking the warning was a false alarm, after all. But it clearly was not. They needed to adjust their thinking. “So we were wrong: the warning wasn’t a malfunction due to the Teacher leaving. The Teacher must still have been here when Tezoc came through.”

“So did it decide to leave after it detected him?”

“I don’t believe that. It would have known Tezoc wasn’t authorized to be here. It would have tried to stop him. It wouldn’t just leave us at his mercy.”

“Given the timing, Ryan, there are only two possibilities.
Either the computer left at almost the exact time Tezoc arrived, or—”

Ryan knew where his sister was heading and didn’t like it. “Or Tezoc must have deactivated it,” he said, finishing the sentence for her.

She nodded.

Ryan shook his head. “Deactivated the Teacher?” he said in disbelief. “Impossible. Not if it didn’t want to be.”

“Ryan, if the Teacher didn’t leave—and you’re sure it wouldn’t do that—it’s the only explanation that makes sense,” she insisted. “Tezoc escapes prison on his planet and comes through the portal to Earth. The city begins to send out its warning, but Tezoc cuts it off in mid-sentence. At the same time he deactivates the central computer so it can’t stop him.”

“As much as I hate to believe it, that’s probably what happened,” said Ryan miserably. “Which means I’m starting to think you’re right again: something very, very fishy is going on. Because if Tezoc knows enough about this city to turn off the central computer, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t know how to get through the force-field.”

Regan nodded, glad that her brother had come over to her way of thinking.

“But let’s keep going,” suggested Ryan. “So eight days ago he arrives and deactivates the computer. Then what happens?”

Regan considered. “Well, he was good, but not perfect. A few seconds of the city’s telepathic warning did get sent. To us. So we got nervous and asked Carl to do a security sweep to look for an alien intruder.”

“Yeah, that went really well,” said Ryan, rolling his eyes. “Security did a sweep, all right. But they found nothing. Tezoc should have registered on their equipment.”

“But that’s not so surprising. Tezoc would’ve been prepared for this possibility. He probably has some technology that makes him invisible to our sensors.”

Ryan nodded. His sister was probably right.

“So he arrives and doesn’t get caught during the security sweep,” she continued. “How does he recruit the mercenaries?”

“Good question,” said Ryan. “And how does he do it so quickly? And why? What’s the rush? He must have really been moving to set everything up in a week. He would have had to leave the city right away and start recruiting. He would have had to know exactly where to go to find mercs, and he would have had to convince them he could pay them the money he was promising.”

“But how does he even get out in the first place?” asked Regan. “He has to get out of the city, and then the cavern, and then the Proact installation. It seems to me it would be almost as hard getting to the outside through security as it would be getting in. Almost. For starters, to even
get
aboveground, he would have to take the
Prometheus elevator. It’s the only way. And it’s guarded every second of every day.”

“Okay,” said Ryan. “So this guy breaks out of an unbreakable prison, defeats Qwervy portal security, deactivates the Teacher, and finds a way out of here. Then all he has to do is recruit his mercenary army almost instantly and plan a way to break back into the city. Another impossibility.” Ryan frowned. “Maybe we’re still sleeping and this is a dream, because I don’t care if this guy is Superman and Houdini combined, he couldn’t have pulled this off.”