Free Double Cross by Sigmund Brouwer Page B

then sat down on the bench.
    â€œIt is not insane.” I held out my other hand. “Recognize this?”
    Director Steven drew in a big breath of surprise. He tried to pull himself out of my grip.
    â€œSo you do recognize it,” I said.
    I held a small, gray, plastic box, with what looked like antennae sticking out of the sides. It was the same box we’d pulled off the axle of the platform buggy. Filled with high-powered explosives, it was just like the one on the video that had exploded the black boxes.
    â€œTake it outside,” Director Steven said, his eyes wide as he stared at it in my hand.
    â€œOutside? Why?”
    After I’d seen the little box on the monitor and remembered the one on the axle, Dad and Rawling had gone out of the platform buggy to remove the box. They’d taken the cover off but left the explosives intact, with the antennae in place. We’d driven safely away, leaving the explosives near the base of a hill. It hadn’t surprised us when it blew only 15 minutes later, taking much of the hillside with it, leaving people at the dome with the mistaken impression that we’d died. And that’s when Rawling and Dad had come up with their theory.
    â€œJust take it outside!” Director Steven was frantic. “The whole dome could be destroyed!”
    But a theory was only a theory unless it could be proved. Rawling had reassembled the cover of the gray box and inserted wires that would look like antennae. But only in dim lighting. Like right here and right now.
    â€œDestroyed?” I said. “Are you suggesting this thing in my hand is a bomb? But how could you know, unless you were the person behind this?”
    â€œNo! No!” Director Steven finally realized what he might have admitted.
    â€œWell,” I said, “if it is not a bomb, we have nothing to worry about. Why not go for a ride in the other platform buggy? Just you and me. Once outside the dome, we will see if it is an explosive or not. How does that sound?”
    â€œNo!”
    If the bomb went off, Director Steven realized he’d be the only one hurt. I, after all, was controlling the robot body. If it was destroyed, it wouldn’t harm me.
    â€œNo? You do not want to go for a ride? Because maybe you know what this is?”
    â€œYes,” he said. “I do. Let go of me, and I’ll tell you everything.”
    I let go of his arm.
    He backed away from me. He grinned. “I’m going to go get security. They’ll take you away. And Ashley. When I erase her computer files, it will be your word against mine.”
    â€œThe explosive,” I said.
    â€œI doubt very much you’ll do anything with it here. In the dome? Where it will kill Ashley and your mother and everyone else?” Another grin of victory. “Fool.” He turned and ran before I could stop him.
    I rolled my robot body around to face Ashley.
    She was frowning. “That didn’t work exactly like you planned.”
    â€œAre you kidding?” I pointed at my video lens. “From the moment he got here, I recorded every word.”

CHAPTER 24
    08.06.2039
    I don’t really want to be sitting here in front of my computer. It’s early evening, and I want to leave my minidome and go up to the telescope. But I know I’d better put the rest of what happened into my journal while it’s still fresh in my head.
    Rawling and Dad had guessed right. That’s why we’d taken so many hours to return to the dome. They’d spent a lot of time throwing ideas back and forth until they’d realized exactly why and how all of it must have happened.
    The entire alien thing was fake. It had been set up secretly right when the dome was first established. Director Steven had been part of it from the beginning. All those years ago Science Agency techies on Earth had made those fakes. And just to show how coldly careful the Science Agency had been, they’d used two