The Examiner moved on across the classroom. John felt as if the floor had fallen out from under him.
“They destroyed him!” he blurted. “They destroyed Super-Rover! That’s not fair. I finished in time! I know I did!”
“John, John, it’s okay!” Emmie insisted. “The Examiner’s just teleporting the robots for safekeeping overnight!”
John looked again.
He could see all the robots were being zapped away. Cammy vanished in a red flash as he watched.
“Oh,” he said. “Phew. Sorry. I’m a little excited. Sorry.”
“Come on. Let’s get some rest,” Emmie said with a grin. “After all, you don’t want to be all sleepy when the competition starts tomorrow, do you?”
“I don’t know if I can sleep now,” John said. “It’s too exciting.”
“Looking forward to it now?” Emmie asked with a smile.
“You know what? I think I am.”
Especially if Super-Rover gets to crunch that robot of Mordant Talliver’s like a dog with a bone . . .
* * *
John slept uneasily that night.
He dreamed that a crowd of Examiners was chasing him down a never-ending hallway, firing beams of red light at him.
When his alarm went off, he sat bolt upright, breathing hard.
“Quick, get dressed, John!” Kaal called from his side of the dorm. “The competition starts in twenty minutes, and we definitely don’t want to be late.”
John pulled on his clothes, feeling nervous and apprehensive. All the excitement of the day before seemed to have evaporated overnight. Now he just felt like he was going to be tested and, in all likelihood, fall at the first hurdle.
There were hundreds of students at the school, most of them older and more experienced than he was, and there were only going to be six finalists.
He’d never made a robot before. Why was he even trying to compete, with the odds stacked against him like that? They must be thousands to one.
And what if he looked like a joke in front of the whole school?
I have to make it through to the final somehow, he decided. I’ve got just as much of a right to be there as any of them. I belong here.
“Wake up time!” Zepp said, and a full glass emerged slowly through the top of the bedside table.
John rubbed sleep out of his eyes and tried to focus. “Is that orange juice?”
“It’s orange, and it’s juice . . . that’s what you wanted, right?”
John sipped it and made a face. “This tastes like bat poop!”
“Lots of things in the universe have orange-colored juice,” said Zepp, sounding confused. “Anyhow, you need to be at the Sonic Sports Hall in ten minutes.”
“Where’s that?” John asked.
“Come on,” Kaal said impatiently. “If you’re quick, I’ll show you.”
John drank down the glass of juice that was orange in color but had nothing to do with oranges and headed out of the room.
John wondered if the Sonic Sports Hall was on some deep level of the ship he’d never been to yet. Hyperspace High was full of unexplored corridors and shifting walkways. But Kaal seemed to be leading him to the normal gyms on the other side of the ship. John didn’t think any of them could possibly be big enough for the competition.
When they reached the large, brilliantly lit gymnasium, he understood. The dividing walls between all the gyms had sunk into the floor — he could see the faint lines where they had been — and this created one enormous wide-open space.
“The teachers can remodel the ship,” Kaal explained. “It can even split into separate ships in an emergency.”
“Cool,” John said, impressed. But his mind was saying something else: How can I ever learn my way around in this school if the walls don’t even stay in one place?
The Sonic Sports Hall was big enough to dock an aircraft carrier. From the ceiling hung racks of spotlights and force-field generators, able to suspend students in bubbles of elastic energy for games of Zero-G Impactball or to create instant arenas for martial arts duels. Matter stream cylinders could provide any surface needed for sports — sand, earth, water, and even lava — and disintegrate it again afterward.
The robots were stationed at the near end of the hall, arranged in a neat row, and in faintly glowing starting zones. Two Examiners hovered over them, keeping a careful watch.
John saw Electric E, IFI, Quondass’s huge drill-like robot, one that looked like a trash can with short, dumpy legs, and several others — more than he had time to count.
And there was Super-Rover, sitting on his haunches like a real dog, as if he were waiting patiently for John.
At the far end of the hall was a faint blue light, filling the space from the floor to the ceiling.
A section of floor had been raised to make a stage. Master Tronic stood there, just visible behind the crowd of students that had already begun to gather.
“Welcome to the contest!” he boomed. “The first round is a simple test of speed. The first six robots to cross the finish line in each year group will be the winners of this very first round!” He gestured with a metal fist to the glimmering blue field.
“Sounds simple enough,” Kaal said, shrugging.
“Yeah,” said John. “It’s not rocket science, is it?”
Kaal looked puzzled. “Of course not,” he answered. “This is Robotics. Rocket Science is next term.”
John rolled his eyes and went to join the crowd that was already checking out the robots. With more than a thousand robots to see, it was like being at some kind of futuristic art exhibition.
Some of the older students had done unbelievable work. A crowd had gathered around Prince Karfelan, a tall, grey-skinned alien with oval black eyes, who had built a robot that was a living swarm of tiny, smaller robots. Stylish, John thought, but not as fast as his own little dog robot.
John turned his attention to the competition from his own year. Many were obviously no-hopers — jumbled, botched, or just plain weird, like the centipede with an air horn for a nose or the thing like a goldfish bowl on triangular wheels. Maybe John had a better chance than he thought!
“Competitors!” roared Master Tronic. “Take your places behind your robots! If you have controllers, activate them now!”
With his heart beating madly, John went and stood behind Super-Rover and switched on his controller.
To his right, Kaal was firing up a controller of his own. His robot, Laserdon, was hawk-like, with a fierce light burning in its eyes.
“I reckon you’re in with a good chance in this round,” John told him. “Laserdon looks fast!”
“Not as fast as Cammy,” Kaal said modestly, looking over at Emmie’s sleek robot. “Have you seen Silverfire, though? Shazilda’s built her for nothing but speed!”
Shazilda was a cocky, purple-skinned girl from the planet Pellgrayne; her robot looked like a rotating silver bullet, hovering a few inches above the ground.
“The race will begin in ten seconds!” Master Tronic announced, the red light in his head now pulsing furiously.
“Good luck,” John said to Kaal. His friend returned a determined smile.
A high-pitched whistle sounded.
In the next second, the hall was filled with the whirring, buzzing, thrumming, screeching noises of a thousand robots launching themselves into the race.
Aluminum-covered cockroaches raced against trundling battle tanks. Scuttling pyramids with wobbly eyes shouldered aside chattering androids with chomping jaws.
But out in front of all of them was Silverfire, rushing through the air like a high-tech express train.
Super-Rover was hot on Silverfire’s trail. John rammed his speed control up to full, steering him around other robots that had capsized, suffered power failure, or — in one case — burst into flames.
Super-Rover’s springy little legs were a blur. John bashed the jump button, sending Super-Rover in a graceful leap over a burning robot. Laserdon glided along behind them. Kaal’s face was a green mask of pure concentration.
Silverfire whizzed into the blue field, finishing first out of the whole contest, followed closely by Dol’s eel-like robot.
There was nobody else in front. John leaned into the final stretch, sure of finishing next. But then Cammy appeared out of nowhere, right ahead of him!
He heard Emmie laugh.
“Surprise!” she said, as her streamlined camouflage robot whizzed through the blue field.
Super-Rover charged through the field seconds later.
John leaped up and punched the air. He’d done it — the first round was down!
Laserdon was hot on Super-Rover’s heels, and John saw Kaal smiling at his achievement. John quickly counted — only one more place left.
The remaining robots wheezed and whined as they struggled to cross the distance. IFI zipped in front of them, moving easily on its force field. As John looked on, Mordant’s robot swerved out in front of two others, a barrel-like stomper and an elegant tripod.
The barrel swerved, too, trying to avoid IFI, and smashed into the tripod, sending it toppling over. The students controlling them yelled angrily.
“Cunning move, sir!” said G-Vez. “Nothing in the rules that says you can’t go sideways, is there, sir?”
“That’s two less losers to worry about,” gloated Mordant. “Okay, I’m bored now. Let’s go.” He pressed a control, and IFI zoomed silently over the finish line.
“And he is through to the next round!” G-Vez cheered.
“I could have been first if I’d wanted to,” Mordant said. He put his hands behind his head as if this had all been too easy.
“Of course!” G-Vez said.
“The race is now over!” announced Master Tronic as the field suddenly turned red with a buzz.
There was a chorus of disappointed awwww sounds from the gathered students. The hall was still full of robots ponderously tromping toward the finish. John felt a little sorry for them, despite his own victory.
“All those who have qualified for the next round will now be transferred to the ship’s main hangar,” Master Tronic said. “To save time, we will be using sonic transference!”
John had only a second to wonder what that was. Then a dizzy feeling came over him, and his vision started to blur. . . .