Chapter 35
This is NOT good. I don’t get it—the robot just up and walked off the space station! Like… on purpose! At least Mippitt showed us where to press on our belts in order to pressurize our uniforms. They’re made of a special thermal material, too, but they won’t keep us warm out here for long. We have to do something fast before we turn into spacesicles! Although that would keep us from suffocating, since our helmets produce only about four hours of oxygen.
Uh-oh. Mippitt is having trouble with that handle. It looks like he’s losing his grip! If he goes, we all go! No—wait! The access door! With my brain being distracted by thoughts of drifting aimlessly in space for the rest of my life, I completely forgot about it! He’s trying to get it open!
I pull myself forward next to Mippitt and grab hold of the handle. We pull with everything we’ve got, but the door won’t budge. I signal for Grimnee to join us up front and tell her what we’re trying to do. If she can’t pry that thing open, nobody can. She yanks on the door with everything she’s got.
Nothing.
This is bad.
I can feel the cold beginning to make its way through my suit. Lightyear must really be feeling it. He doesn’t even have a suit. His fur must be a pretty good insulator, though, because he’s hanging in there. And what’s really weird—he doesn’t even seem to need oxygen, which is good, seeing as we forgot to get him a helmet. None of this matters, though, if we can’t get inside that robot. The way I see it, we have one more shot.
“Hey, Grimnee,” I say through the intercom in our helmets. “That access door is being a bit of a bully, don’t you think? Making us stay out here in the cold and all?”
Problem solved. We pull ourselves into the robot’s boot and shut the door that Grimnee tore open behind us. There’s a lot of room, but we stick close together. Everybody is pretty shaken up. Gil’s water globe is frozen solid, so we roll him over to a pipe that’s giving off a lot of heat so he can thaw out.
It’s loud in here, since the propulsion system runs through the boot. It’s also warm, though, so nobody is complaining. I lift my head and can see right up the inside of the robot’s leg. There are pipes and ducts and electronic panels and ladders and catwalks all over the place. I still can’t believe my dad designed this thing.
“I thought you said this robot was too heavy to be sucked out the air lock. Now what are we supposed to do?”
“C’mon, Rand-El. It didn’t get sucked out. It walked out. You saw it. We all did.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t think so. My mom said they hadn’t even tested the mind-transfer beam yet. They were going to run some experiments on smaller stuff before they tried it on any of the robots.”
“Smaller stuff? You mean like a toaster? Were they going to transfer someone’s mind into a toaster, Kelvin? That would be great, you know. Then I could just tell it to make my toast darker instead of changing the setting. Just think of the time I could save if I didn’t have to—”
“Knock it off, Rand-El. Look, we’re all a little panicky right now.”
“A little panicky? A LITTLE?! We’ve been sucked out into space, in the middle of nowhere, stuck in a robot foot, headed for who knows where, with no way to tell anybody what happened! I’m a lot panicky right now, Kelv. A LOT!”
“Well, somebody must be up in this thing’s head controlling it. Maybe they’re just taking it out for a test flight or something. It looks like these ladders might go all the way to the top. Somebody should climb up and take a look.”
“I’ll go! I used to climb stuff way higher than this back home.”
“After what we saw in Coach Ed’s class, I don’t doubt it. Be careful, though. And don’t let whoever is driving this thing see you—we have no idea what they might be up to.”
