Free Double Cross by Sigmund Brouwer

And I’ll meet you there at 8:00. I think I know a way to get you in secretly. See you then.
    Your happy, happy friend ,
    Ashley
    I sighed with satisfaction. Dad and Rawling would be happy to hear it too. If the rest of our plan worked, it would be great. If not …
    I didn’t want to think about it. Actually, it was tough to think about anything. Not with how both of them snored.
    I tore a little strip of paper off the note Rawling had written. I wheeled over to where Dad was asleep and snoring like a chainsaw. I tickled the inside of his nostril with the paper.
    Asleep, he swatted at it.
    I tickled more.
    He snorted and grunted and finally hit himself in the nose so hard that it woke him up.
    â€œHi,” I said innocently. “Want to hear about Ashley?”

CHAPTER 22
    â€œWhat nonsense is this? Calling me here this late at night?”
    The angry hiss belonged to Director Blaine Steven. He directed his questions to Ashley, who sat quietly on a bench near the tall, thick plants in the center of the dome, where she and I had met just an hour earlier.
    â€œThank you for coming,” she said sweetly.
    It was dim. This late—just before 9:00—the dome lights were turned down. Most scientists and techies were reading or at their personal computers or getting ready to sleep. At the dome, the policy was early to bed and early to rise.
    â€œI wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t sent that crazy message,” Director Steven continued in his low growl. Steven, who was over 60, ran his hands through his thick, wavy gray hair as he talked. “What do you mean Tyce Sanders sent you a message?”
    â€œThe aliens are fake,” Ashley said bluntly. “When an asteroid hit nearby, causing a quake, someone here triggered a bomb that exposed the black boxes. Just so people would think it was the asteroid that uncovered them. But all along, the so-called aliens had been set up and waiting. The Science Agency had been tracking the asteroid and knew when it would hit.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIt’s in the e-mail Tyce sent me.”
    That was true. Rawling and Dad had come up with the theory, hoping it had enough truth in it to be able to bluff Steven into admitting more. I’d sent it to Ashley by e-mail so she could be ready for this meeting.
    â€œThat’s the most outrageous thing I’ve heard. Tyce is a space hero. I know you miss him badly, but you shouldn’t make things up.”
    â€œYou see,” Ashley continued calmly, “when the dome was first established over 14 years ago, those black boxes were buried by someone on a secret mission from the dome. They were left there for an emergency.”
    â€œI’ve had enough out of you.” Director Steven tried to look angry, but he couldn’t quite pull it off. He seemed worried, and he looked around a few times as though he wondered if anyone was overhearing this.
    â€œIt was planned for the day or two before people on Earth who were part of the United Nations would have to decide whether or not to continue funding the dome. Fake aliens and fake antigravity and fake perpetual motion. If people believed in it, they wouldn’t care how much was spent to keep the Mars Project going.”
    â€œAll of this is in your e-mail?”
    It was. Rawling and Dad had had a lot of time to think this through—ever since the explosion that was supposed to kill us. Those boxes were set up to look very convincing. But if the stuff inside could have been examined, it could easily have been seen as fake. We were convinced that was the reason everything was rigged to blow up.
    The revolving globe? We’d guessed that, with electromagnetics from an energy source hidden underneath the box, triggered by the opening of the door, a globe would float, repelled by magnetics. Which was why the robot had short-circuited once the arm reached inside and touched the invisible currents.
    â€œAnd more,” Ashley