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  “There must be a leak somewhere,” Gordon whispered. Then he stopped. The tunnel entrance— “How did you know he was hiding there?”

  “He told us what he was doing,” Doug said sternly. A glance at Doug’s face told Gordon the grimness meant more than sorrow for his friend—he suspected Gordon of treachery.

  No one should have known about the plan except himself, Caleb, Doc, and Neil. Hence, he’d thought Doc had to be the traitor. But if these people had known—

  “Did Caleb tell everyone?” he asked, with more nervous excitement in his voice than he wanted.

  “No.” Doug stood unmoving on the other side of the table. “Just us.”

  “Did any of you tell anyone?”

  Louis, utterly immersed in his circuitry to this point, looked up indignantly. “What do you take us for?”

  All three of them stared at him. But—if Doc wasn’t the traitor, it had to be one of them.

  Neil had to hear this. And—and—

  Gordon caught his breath.

  Not stopping to excuse himself, he rushed outside, towards the lab.

  When he burst through the lab doors, Neil and Doc were alone in the middle of a fierce argument.

  “You think you know him so well, but he’s different!” Neil’s voice exclaimed, hot with passion. “You can’t just presume upon that and depend on it to save the lives of hundreds of millions of…”

  Here he saw Gordon and stopped abruptly. Doc turned and lowered his eyebrows.

  “Neil, there’s a leak in engineering!” Gordon burst out.

  Neil cocked his head and pulled irritably at his neckerchief. “What’s that supposed to mean? What’s leaking?”

  “No!” Gordon cried. “Not that kind of leak. When Dagny Dalton came to the shack, he knew just where Caleb and I were before he even got there. At first I thought it had to be Doc who’d told him, but—I just found out that Doug Goldman and Louis and Carrie Simons all knew about the plan, too.” He stopped to catch his breath and stood panting as Neil and Doc took in the information.

  The first thing to break the silence was Doc’s swearing. Neil looked like he might like to swear too, but he didn’t. Instead, he adjusted his glasses nervously over his round blue eyes, which were larger than ever.

  “The new project,” he whispered.

  Chapter Eight

  Neil didn’t wait to hear whether Doc and Gordon agreed with his suspicions. He darted out of the lab like a madman, movements rushed with an urgency that Gordon’s mind echoed.

  Doc furrowed his bushy eyebrows and turned on Gordon. “You listen to me, young man. We’ve got to catch that bug and catch him fast.”

  Gordon nodded, though he didn’t know whether Doc meant the traitor or Dagny Dalton. Either way, his statement was true.

  “We’ve failed once, and we can’t fail again.” Doc yanked a three-legged bar stool out from under the lab table and settled himself on it, resting the worn elbows of his brown and blue jacket on the table behind him.

  So he meant Dagny Dalton. Gordon swallowed. He didn’t want to face that man again. But—how else could they get the key they needed to get into the Control Center?

  “I still can’t figure out one thing,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  Gordon moistened his lips. “Why he didn’t kill me. He had a gun. That’s how he killed Caleb. But then he just ran off and let me live. Why, when he knows how bad I am for the Academy?”

  Doc shrugged, and Gordon saw no change in his face. “Ran out of ammo.”

  “No,” he protested, “it was an energy gun.”

  “Ran out of energy then.”

  “That’s another thing. There’s no way that he was using a full-powered laser with that shot. He had it set on low. If we could just figure out why he did that…”

  “It won’t make any difference.”

  “It might! If we can understand him, it’ll help us…”

  “I understand him. I’ve known him a long time, and I promise it won’t help us.”

  “How do you know? I don’t see why I shouldn’t…”

  “Let’s just get working on a plan.”

  “Will you stop that? I have as much right to my thoughts as…”

  “A kid who won’t stand up for what’s right doesn’t have…”

  “I will stand up for what’s right! What do you think I’ve been doing the past…”

  “I don’t know, you tell me. You’re starting to sound like…”

  “Like Neil? I’m glad of it. At least he…”

  “What do you know about it anyway? You’re just a…”

  “Just a boy, I know, but that doesn’t…”

  “And a boy with a terminal blood condition on top of…”

  “Stop it! You think just because you’re a doctor you can…”

  “Being a doctor is fun, you should try it sometime.”

  Gordon couldn’t think of anything to interrupt that with in time, so he just glared. Doc actually smiled at him.

  “Shall we get down to business?”

  Gordon shrugged. This Doc didn’t feel like the same one who’d washed the blood from his hands and talked with him over the empty grave just hours before.

  Doc gestured to a wooden chair with a cracked back. Gordon pulled it out and sat down. He shifted to avoid broken wood poking him in the spine.

  Doc turned to face the table. “If I know Dagny Dalton…”

  “Do you?”

  The look of frustration on Doc’s face washed away his own irritation.

  “Of course I do. As I was saying, he won’t be able to resist an invitation to come see the inside of the base for himself.”

  Gordon blinked. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “Usually the only people who can get in are the people who are allowed.”

  “I know.”

  “But we can turn that off.”

  Gordon pondered this. “Don’t you think he’ll suspect it’s a trap?”

  “Of course he will. So how do we prove that it’s real?”

  “Also… how do we know he’ll come alone?”

  “We don’t. Not for sure. But like I said, I know him pretty well. He likes to work alone. Especially in delicate situations. A lot of the goons work alone. They have Implants too, remember. When your life is at the mercy of your companions, it’s pretty hard to trust each other.”

  Gordon shuddered. “Does that—happen often?”

  Doc shrugged and went on. “We can have someone from the base pose as a traitor—or maybe someone friendly from outside. But again… how to prove it’s true?”

  Gordon started to shake his head, then the words “from outside” made him pause. “Guinea pig,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “If we use someone from outside, someone who doesn’t have access to the base, they could prove to Dagny Dalton that it was safe by coming in ahead of him.”

  Doc’s expression didn’t change for a minute, then his lips turned up in a slow smile. “Yes…”

  “Hey… what about one of your ‘patients’?” Gordon suggested, excitement building in him. “Send a message by whoever comes around tonight. Write that there will be an hour or so where the thing is shut down—say for repairs. Dagny Dalton jumps at the chance, especially when he realizes he can have the other guy test it for him.”

  Doc nodded. “They come here at the appointed time, the guy walks in, proves the truth of your tip, and Dagny Dalton follows him in.”

  “And we can have people in position to jump him,” Gordon finished.

  “I think it had better be at night,” Doc suggested. “So he’ll feel a bit safer. We wouldn’t want our dear Dagny to be nervous.”

  Gordon grinned.

  *****

  Neil rubbed his chin, where a faint five o’ clock shadow had appeared. “I don’t know.”

  “Think of a better plan,” Doc taunted. “Time is running out.”

  “Aren’t there just two m
ore days?” Gordon asked.

  Neil nodded wearily. Deep circles of dark skin under his eyes showed how much the stress was getting even to him. “Maybe less than that.”

  He didn’t have to tell them what he meant. It might not be long before their own shield was shut down, using their own technology.

  “Wasn’t the project unfinished?” Gordon asked hopefully.

  “Yes, but at the Academy they have the top scientists in the world and the most sophisticated computers.” Neil shook his head, then a tiny gleam of hope shone in his big eyes. “Unless it wasn’t someone who was on the project. They all deny having a part in it, but I’ve put them all on around-the-clock surveillance. There’s still a chance we could get it finished, but I don’t want to count on it.

  “Which brings us to our plan,” Doc said. He lounged against the laboratory wall, puffing away at a cigarette.

  “I don’t like it,” Neil sighed. “I don’t like staking the lives of two hundred people on an outsider and the hope that Dagny Dalton might come alone.”

  “But it’s our best chance,” Gordon insisted.

  Neil looked him in the eye. Gordon looked steadily back, and after a moment Neil sighed again. “All right. I suppose—you two are right.” He looked up at Doc with a tired question in his eyes and Doc shook his head emphatically.

  “Go to lunch, Gordon,” Neil ordered.

  Gordon backed towards the door but kept his eyes fixed on the scientist. “The plan?”

  “Tonight,” Neil nodded. “I’ll start getting everything in place right away.”

  Turning, Gordon opened the door and walked out. This time they didn’t start talking until the door closed. After it clicked he could hear their voices, but rather than being angry and irritable, one was tired and the other firm. He couldn’t hear what they said.

  He started towards the mess hall, his stomach too unsettled for food to sound appetizing. The plan would obviously be risky. Even if it worked, there was a high probability of someone being hurt before Dagny Dalton was caught. And what if he didn’t come alone? What if he told the Head and the Head decided to storm the base and eliminate everyone once and for all? Of course, if that did happen, they’d see them coming and could turn the shield back on again.

  But it seemed clear that Doc knew something about the goon that they didn’t. Whatever motivated Dagny to keep his weapon on low intensity and not kill Gordon might be what ensured he’d come alone now. Why wouldn’t Doc share the information?

  But like Neil said, Doc hadn’t steered them wrong yet.

  They kept him busy all afternoon. As soon as Gordon finished picking at his food, he went back to the lab, where a man in a cream-colored coat told him Neil wanted him in engineering. He directed his steps accordingly and found both Neil and Doc there, Neil giving instructions with his usual energy, and Doc slouching behind him with his usual cigarette. Gordon tagged along behind them until Doc got the news that another “patient” was waiting for him outside the shield. Then he asked Neil, “When is it going to happen?”

  “One A.M.,” Neil replied. “Late enough for Dalton to believe we’re all asleep, but early enough to give us time to prepare for tomorrow.”

  When Doc had dispatched his message, and Neil had gotten all his soldiers to their designated hiding places, Doc took Gordon to the familiar medical tent to wait.

  “Are we going to spring him from here?” Gordon asked.

  “‘We’ are not doing any springing,” Doc said firmly. “You’re too valuable, and I can’t be seen helping.”

  Gordon slumped. “But I’m not just going to sit here while everybody else does the work!”

  “Who said you had to sit?” Doc rolled and lit another cigarette. “Stand, lie down, kneel, fly for all I care.”

  “I’m not going to stay here.” Gordon tried to sound equally firm.

  “You’re staying, if I have to sew the tent flap closed.”

  “I’ll crawl out the bottom.”

  “I’ll give you a good intravenous dose of barbiturate if you try it. You’re staying here until Dagny Dalton is caught, and that’s final.”

  Gordon coughed as a puff of smoke drifted his way, and moved out of its path. “But I want to see what happens,” he protested one last time.

  “Oh, is that all you want?” Dropping his cigarette in the dust and stamping on it, Doc walked over to a small, rectangular screen that sat on a chest at one end of the tent. He flipped it on, and Gordon saw a keyboard image on the screen. Doc moved in front of the image, blocking Gordon’s view, typed, then waited for a moment before moving out of the way. He navigated through a green and black menu that appeared, at last pushing a button that said “East 38.”

  A hazy blue image of the dusty path between two buildings on the east side of the base flashed onto the screen.

  “Keep an eye here around one,” he said. “Until then, you’d better get some sleep.”

  Gordon would have argued again except for the yawn that accosted him at the word “sleep.” His muscles, especially his right calf, ached, and a slight pounding in his temples told him Doc was right.

  He dragged himself to the cot. “Wake me up half an hour before that or else.”

  “Or else what?” Doc retorted.

  Gordon struggled to think of something. “Or else I’ll tell Neil you gave me another vascular tranquilizer.”

  He was too sleepy to tell whether Doc chuckled or not, but he suspected it. “All right, you scoundrel. Get some sleep—if this goes well, tomorrow’s gonna be your big day.”

  *****

  He awoke to Doc’s shaking and threats, and tumbled off the cot half an hour after midnight. Groggy, he sat near the screen, blinking eyes riveted to it for any sign of motion.

  Doc wasn’t smoking now, and the hot, clear air slowly pulled Gordon into alertness. No ticking clock broke the silence of the night, and the image in front of them remained dead as the minutes passed.

  “Bingo,” Doc breathed, as two shadowy forms approached the outside of the shield.

  One of them stepped through, becoming clearer. Gordon didn’t recognize the man; thin, dressed in a black jumpsuit, confident in his motions. He walked a few steps in, then turned back to face the man still outside.

  After just a moment, the taller, darker form stepped through the barrier, and Gordon recognized Dagny Dalton. Tall, broad, dressed in black, and still with those familiar black glasses.

  So far, so good.

  The first man waited near the shield, while Dagny Dalton took slow steps forward, down the alley, his detonator poised in his hand. Gordon shivered. What if this hadn’t been a trap? How many people would die?

  For seventeen suspenseful seconds, nothing happened. The goon stepped forward, making his way toward the center of the complex.

  Then, out of the two buildings he had just passed, eight people appeared, four on each side. Gordon barely had time to count them before two of them had their hands on Dagny Dalton’s wrists, and a third gripped the detonator. The remaining five tackled him from the back, knocking him to his knees. They took the detonator from him, but at the same time he freed his other hand. It went immediately to a black holster, and Gordon jerked forward instinctively.

  The man holding the detonator ran towards the lab with it, and the other seven worked to pull Dagny Dalton to the ground and bind his legs together. They flipped him onto his back in the dust just as he whipped out an energy gun. Two of them slammed his arm to the ground.

  On the bottom left corner of the screen someone rushed towards the group, then opened his mouth, clearly screaming, though Gordon could hear no sound. Then he stumbled to the ground.

  The ambushers succeeded in wrenching the gun from Dagny Dalton’s hands, then bound his wrists with tattered rope. Four of them dragged him towards the lab, where Neil waited to make the cast.

  The rest of the attackers rushed to the injured man and picked him up. Gordon turned to his companion. “Can we go out now?”

 
; “No reason to.” As nonchalant as ever, Doc pulled out a match and struck it on the chest in front of them.

  Gordon jumped up. “But you’re a doctor! Aren’t you going to help him?”

  “Of course.” Glaring, Doc lit a cigarette, shook the match, and dropped it in the dirt. “Where do you think they’re taking him?”

  Gordon’s face grew hot. Of course they’d bring the young man to the medical tent, why else would they be carrying him off?

  “You handle it.”

  He jerked his head up and stared at Doc’s face, not sure he’d heard or understood. “What?”

  “I said you handle it.”

  “Handle—what?”

  “The wound. It’s a simple thing, I want you to clean and suture it for me.”

  “But—why?” Gordon gasped.

  “I’m tired.”

  Gordon gritted his teeth. “I’m not the doctor, you are.”

  “Do you think I was born a doctor? I had to start somewhere, and so do you.”

  “But I’m not going to be a doctor!” Gordon cried.

  “That’s what you think.”

  Before Gordon could protest further, the three men hurried into the tent, bearing the groaning young man in their arms. Pete. The brother-in-law of the man who’d died protecting him; the uncle of the baby who had been kidnapped days ago.

  The men laid Pete on the cot, one of them explaining, “We caught Dagny Dalton all right, but…”

  “I know.” Doc didn’t move. “Thanks boys, we’ll handle it.”

  They filed out, leaving Pete whimpering on the bed, still clutching his leg.

  Doc sat smoking in front of the screen, not moving.

  “Help him!” Gordon yelled.

  Doc looked at him evenly.

  “Do you hear me?” Gordon leaned in, just inches from Doc, and jabbed a finger towards the man on the bed. “Help him!”

  Doc blew a puff of smoke in Gordon’s face.

  Coughing, Gordon jerked back. “I told you I’m not going to do it! How can you just sit there and let him bleed to death?”

  “How can you?”

  This shut Gordon up. He fished for an answer, but as much as he fought against admitting it, there wasn’t one. Was there really a difference?