The Plight of the Bumblebee: Chapter 7

Chapter 7

“Oh boy,” Joe said. “Just where is the cavalry when you need them, anyway?”

The three Starmen raced toward the drone, but they knew that they were too far away: by the time they got there it would be too late. Sure enough, the men closed in on the drone – but as they got close the drone flew over their heads and soared into the distance.

The Starmen stopped in their tracks. “Woah!” Joe said. “I don’t remember anyone telling us that those machines could fly.”

“Wonderful,” Zip said, “just wonderful. Now what are we going to do?”

“Um, probably get involved in a fight,” Joe replied, observing that the men who had tried to stop the drone had noticed the three Starmen and were headed their way, looking none-too-pleased. “What do you say you let me take all four of them at once, Zip, just to make it fair?”

“I don’t think so,” Mark said, shaking his head. “The middle two are mine – you can have the others.”

Thirty seconds later the fight ended with their four attackers lying on the ground, moaning in pain. Just as the fight ended the Starmen noticed a group of three officers running toward them, accompanied by several Starlight Enterprise personnel.

“I’m sorry we were late,” one of the officers told Zip, “but it took us longer than we thought to get to the station.”

“That’s ok,” Zip said. “Can you take custody of these men? They tried to grab the drone right after it got off the train, and when it flew off into the distance they turned and attacked us.”

The officers helped the injured men off the ground and arrested them. “Ok, let’s hear it: what were you doing here?” But they refused to talk. They led them away, leaving the Starmen with the four personnel from Starlight Enterprise.

“We know the drone is here somewhere,” Zip said, “we just don’t know where. It couldn’t have gone far. Do you have a way to search the station?”

“I think so,” one of the personnel said. “We should be able to track it by its energy signature. That particular model uses a special nuclear power source that can be tracked from a distance with the right equipment.”

Using a special tracking device that the Starlight Enterprise personnel had brought, the Starmen were able to pinpoint the machine on the island. It had apparently taken refuge inside a large building a short walk away. “Very nice,” Zip commented. “Remind me to ask Richard to start building those into our compads.”

“Don’t forget the popcorn maker, too,” Joe said. “I’ve been wanting that for years.”

The three Starmen and the four Starlight Enterprise personnel raced toward the location specified on the tracking device. “It doesn’t seem to be moving,” Mark noticed. “I wonder what it’s doing.”

“Should we call in any backup units?” a technician named Bradley asked. “We have some on standby in the case of an emergency.”

“Not yet,” Zip said. “Let’s see what is going on first. If trouble breaks out then we’ll call them in.”

In less than five minutes the group found themselves in front of a large glass building. “Cyragon Data Services, LTD,” Mark said aloud, reading a large sign posted on the building’s front lawn. “I’ve never heard of them before.”

“Let’s go!” Zip yelled, sprinting across the lawn toward the building’s entrance. The entire group charged inside, bursting into the lobby. They raced past the startled secretary in the outer office and ran down a long hallway.

“Which way?” Zip said.

“Down here,” a Starlight technician replied, examining the tracking device, “and to the left – no, to the right,” he said. “It looks like the drone is in a big room at the end of the hallway.”

“Got it,” Zip said. Within seconds the entire group had burst into that room. Inside they saw what looked like a large laboratory; parts and equipment were strewn everywhere, and technicians in lab coats were scattered around the room. To one corner Zip spied the drone they had been looking for, standing motionless.

The Starmen’s noisy entrance into the room startled all of the workers in the laboratory. All of them, in unison, turned around to see what had caused the commotion. One of them stepped forward to greet them.

“Hello gentlemen,” he said, stepping forward to extend a hand. “I’m Dr. Lowery, the head of the data retrieval department. How can I help you?”

Zip pointed at the drone. “We’ve come to get him. Do you know what he’s doing here?”

“Ah, you must be from L5! Don’t worry – we’ll be done in just a minute,” Dr. Lowery assured him. “This data core has been badly damaged but I think we can transfer its data to a new unit. Give us another fifteen minutes and we should be good to go.”

“The data core?” Joe asked.

“Why, yes! This is where that data core was first designed. It’s pretty badly damaged, but we have a lot of experience in removing data from damaged data cores. This particular core is actually so old that we’re probably the only laboratory in the world that can do the job. We’ll have it transferred in a few minutes and then you should be good to go.”

“Ah,” Zip said. “Thanks. We’ll get out of your way, then.”

The three Starmen left the room and headed outside.

“Do you need anything else?” Bradley asked.

“No, but thank you,” Zip said. “I think we can handle it from here.”

As the four Starlight Enterprise personnel walked away the three Starmen looked at each other. “So, the drone was told to go fix the data core – “, Zip began.

“- and did exactly that,” Joe responded.

“Yup,” said Mark.

There was silence. “I guess we wait,” Zip said.

“I guess so,” Joe replied.

Fifteen minutes later Zip, Mark, Joe, and the drone were all riding together on a high-speed train, bound for Sharps Chapel, New Jersey. None of them had very much to say.

* * * *

Three hours after leaving the L5 space station Zip, Mark, Joe, and the drone docked once again in the L5 space station. The three Starmen had to fly with the drone because their shuttle, the Red Tiger, had been impounded by the police and was no longer parked in the field.

The pandemonium inside L5 was not nearly as bad as it had been when they left. They had contacted the station while en-route to let them know that they would be back in time, and the crowds became calmer after the emergency lighting had been restored and after they were told that things would be back to normal shortly. The three Starmen followed the drone from the hangar to the power plant, where it placed the repaired data core back into the central computing unit. Within minutes the main lights came back on and the station was back to normal.

Once the lights came back on the Starmen walked upstairs to Alfred Nelson’s office to let him know what had happened. When they arrived at his office they saw that he was now a very happy man.

“The police called after you left New Spindrift,” he told the Starmen. “The men they arrested have began to talk.”

“That’s great!” Zip replied. “What did they have to say?”

“Oh, they said quite enough. It turns out that they were part of a small startup company that had taken residence aboard this station. They were conducting secret nanobot experiments, trying to build self-replicating machines. They didn’t have much money so they decided to hack their way into the power supply of the base to avoid running up a huge electrical bill. They also tried to tap directly into the processing unit of this base to avoid paying computer time fees.”

“Ah,” Joe said.

“The problem is that they didn’t do a very good job. Their hacks caused all kinds of problems; the computer started doing weird things, and they drew so much power that the plant blew a fuse and shorted out the data core. They will be properly punished,” the director said firmly. “I’ll have none of that on board this station! I’m going to seriously improve the security around here.”

“Sounds good,” Zip said. “Did they say what they were doing on New Spindrift?”

“Oh yes!” he replied. “They realized right away what had happened to the space station, and they went to New Spindrift to see if they could expedite the repair process. They arrived shortly before you did, as a matter of fact. When they saw you approaching the drone they thought that you were trying to interfere with it and they attacked you in order to protect it.”

After making sure that there was nothing else they could do, the three Starmen walked back toward their hangar, where they boarded a Starlight Enterprise shuttle. Joe guided the ship out of the hangar into space and then set it on a course that would lead back to Amundsen City.

“So,” Zip said after Joe set the ship on auto-pilot, “what did we accomplish this afternoon?”

“Why, obviously, we saved the L5 space station from a horde of angry Xenobots intent on taking it over,” Joe replied.

“Sounds good to me,” Mark said. And that was all they said until they were back on the Moon.