Chapter 25

            In the center of the Catt University campus was an atrium complete with a running fountain shaped like one of Whiskers' distant ancestors.  At night, the atrium allowed students, faculty, or random visitors to gaze up at the night sky.  Will was in the latter category; at the moment he sat on a stone bench to stare at the unfamiliar stars.  There was also Cattatonia's three moons, smaller points of light from the ships in orbit, and meteor shower-like streaks through the atmosphere from falling debris. 

            Somewhere, amongst all that chaos and carnage was Jessie.  And with her Whiskers, the ruler of the planet Will occupied.  He couldn't help wondering how an innocent childhood game could have become something so twisted and wrong.  That his thoughts—and those of Tom and Jessie—had helped to shape this only deepened his heartsickness. 

            Another question began to plague him as he looked up at the sky.  A lot of kids played pirates or cowboys and Indians or games like that, did those games create parallel universes too?  Or were he, Tom, and Jessie somehow special in that their creations had come to life?  Neither answer made him feel any better about what had happened.

            He supposed he should talk about all of this with Dr. Ruff, but the doctor was still sealed in his laboratory.  There had to be some kind of rational explanation for this "beta energy" and "theta energy" that had created the BPS and Black Ships and unwittingly pitted them into a bloody struggle to the death.

            He looked around the atrium at a gnarly old tree, its branches devoid of any life.  Will stared at the tree, focusing on it intensely until his eyes were only slits.  He tried to imagine buds forming along the branches.  Those buds would break open into green, teardrop-shaped leaves.  The entire tree would be covered in them to form a perfect canopy.

            Nothing happened.  His body began to tremble as he continued to focus on the tree.  Still nothing happened.  Why?  Did his power only exist on Earth?  Did it exist at all?  Maybe Tom was the real Creator or Jessie.  Or maybe none of them had done anything.  Maybe it was all a horrible coincidence or a joke played by someone with real power.

            He ran a hand over his face and sighed.  It was no use.  He couldn't bring the tree back to life any more than he could force the Black Ships in the Dog's Head nebula to withdraw.  He wasn't a hero like Tadd Iceslinger.  He wasn't even a hero like Jessie, who had put herself in harm's way to try and save her creations.

            Slumping back against a wall, he watched more streaks slash across the sky as debris from the battle came down.  Before long he and Tom would be back up there, on the Mutt or Bulldog in a final, desperate attempt to locate the Black Ships' main base.  As during the battle over Cattatonia, his role would be to sit quiet and watch the carnage unfold.  A helpless, useless passenger.  Some god.

            He heard the sound of heavy footsteps on stone.  Turning around, he recognized the brown face and white ears of Dr. Ruff.  But something was wrong.  The doctor walked so stiffly that Will wondered if the android's servos had rusted like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.  And Will didn't remember Dr. Ruff's eyes glowing red before.

            "Dr. Ruff?  Are you all right?" Will asked.

            "You will surrender yourself to me, Will Denton."  Dr. Ruff's voice sounded mechanical and as stiff as his knee joints. 

            "Surrender myself?  What are you talking about?  Do you want to do more—"

            He didn't get a chance to finish as Dr. Ruff picked up another stone bench as easily as if it were made of cardboard.  Will threw himself to the ground so that the bench shattered over his head, raining pieces down on him.  He looked up to see Dr. Ruff continuing to approach like an out of control automaton. 

            "Dr. Ruff, what are you doing?"

            "Surrender to me, Will Denton or face the consequences."

            Dr. Ruff broke off the Catt statue in the center of the fountain as easily as he'd picked up the bench.  He held it up over his head, his cybernetic muscles showing no signs of strain.  "Surrender yourself now."

            Will didn't need any more incentive to take off running.

#

            It soon became obvious he didn't have any idea where he was going.  He had only spent a few hours on the campus and those had been in the daylight with someone to guide him.  Running at full speed in the dark he soon found himself unable to tell one ziggurat-shaped building from another.

Making things worse, with the emergency, the campus was deserted except for Dr. Ruff, his staff, Will, and Tom so that the buildings he ran past were unoccupied.  He felt as if he had suddenly been thrust into the middle of a horror movie, looking over his shoulder as he ran while searching in vain for anyone to help him.  His luck held out in that at least he hadn't fallen and twisted his ankle quite yet.

            Dr. Ruff followed Will at the same shambling pace as before.  Despite this, the doctor's red eyes were always on the horizon, prompting Will to keep running.  He sped around a corner, one shoe skidding but somehow keeping his balance.  Looking ahead of him, he saw only a spate of unfamiliar buildings.  Though he wasn't sure, he could have sworn he'd seen them only a few minutes earlier.

            At this point Will wished he had brought a communications device or that he still had Ricky and Heather to serve as his bodyguards.  Though he wasn't sure how much even a fighter like Heather could do against a crazed android with Dr. Ruff's strength.  Thinking of the Black Ship warriors that had boarded the Beagle, Will doubted Heather would have much better luck in this case.

            The ones who could help him were Spot II and Buster.  Their Power Collars could turn Dr. Ruff's legs into molten puddles, or at least so Will assumed.  Except if Dr. Ruff had invented the Power Collars he might have designed them to be ineffective against him.  It was a moot point as Spot II and Buster were in space while he was down here; by the time they could get down here, Dr. Ruff would have ripped him limb from limb.

            Or the doctor might have something else in store for him.  He had demand Will surrender to him.  Perhaps he had intentionally thrown the bench away from Will so as not to kill his prize.  But what did Dr. Ruff want with him?  Maybe he had found a way to harness Will's beta energy or maybe he wanted to use Will as a pawn for making a deal with the Black Ships.  All Will knew was that he didn't want to find out what Dr. Ruff intended to do with him.

            He finally recognized one of the buildings:  the circular planetarium.  He headed for it, glancing back over his shoulder to see Dr. Ruff's red eyes still on the horizon, still tracking him.  It would only be a matter of time before Will did fall down or exhausted himself.  Once that happened, the android would pounce on him.

            Will did feel his legs turning leaden with each step as he pounded towards the planetarium.  He didn't have the breath to scream for help, not that it would have done much good anyway, not with everyone else scattered and likely asleep.  Checking behind him again, he saw Dr. Ruff had made up some of the difference between them.

            Charging through the front doors of the planetarium, Will kept running.  There was no point wasting time trying to barricade the doors; he remembered all too well how easily Dr. Ruff had crashed through a wall of debris on the Beagle.  He ran past the doors to the main hall of the planetarium, opting for the narrow tunnels leading into the bowels of the building.

            Through an open door, he saw what appeared to be science classrooms with computerized blackboards and rows of metal desks.  None of these objects would make a decent weapon against an android.  Will plunged on, trying not to think about what would happen when he ran out of room to run.  At that point his back would literally be against the wall, leaving him with no other options but to surrender or try battling the doctor with his imposing strength.  Will didn't have any doubts about how that would turn out.

            The corridor wound deeper underground.  Will started to hear a steady hum in the air.  From warning signs he passed, he deduced it must be from the geothermic generator that provided the entire campus with power.  His panicked journey came to an end at a pair of doors painted bright yellow.  Will tried to open the doors, but they were locked by a computerized lock he didn't have the time or expertise to disarm.

            He looked around the corridor in desperation, hearing Dr. Ruff's footsteps echoing towards him.  Then Will spotted a white door.  To his relief it was not protected with a computerized lock, so that with three swift kicks he managed to break it open.

            The lights came on and Will nearly began to cry.  After all his frenzied running, he had somehow wound up in the laboratory Dr. Ruff had commandeered to continue his research.  Will recognized some of the equipment on the tables from the lab in the Beagle.  Nowhere though did he see any kind of weapon.

            With nowhere else to go, he did what he could to barricade the doors by pushing carts of lab equipment to the doorway.  He was about to push a computer terminal over when he hit upon an idea.  Maybe there was some way he could use the terminal to access Dr. Ruff's computerized brain and turn him off.

            This hope faded quickly as Will realized he didn't have any experience in computer hacking.  He certainly didn't know enough about it to hack a computer as advanced as that in Dr. Ruff's head.  Giving up on this idea, he searched through the terminal for some way to get out a distress signal to someone on campus or one of the ships in orbit.  As if sensing what would happen, Dr. Ruff had blocked the communications systems on the terminal so that Will could do little more than type out his death note.

            The footsteps echoing down the hallway became louder.  Will braced himself as he heard the footsteps finally stop.  "Surrender yourself, Will Denton.  Resistance is useless."

            Will said nothing, instead closing his eyes and again trying to summon some godlike powers to make Dr. Ruff vanish.  All that happened was the android smashed through the feeble barricade Will had put up.  The doctor's red eyes surveyed the lab before turning to Will.  Dr. Ruff took a step forward.  "Now I will take you to my master."

            "Who's that?" Will asked.  He backed away in his chair to come to rest against the wall.  If he could keep Dr. Ruff talking, he might be able to find a way to sneak out and prolong the chase.  This would probably do little good in the long run, but it was his only hope.

            Dr. Ruff would have none of that.  "There is no escape, Will Denton.  You will come with me willingly or unwillingly."

            The doctor took a step forward.  Will reached for the nearest object of some weight.  It turned out to be RAM, the Robotic Avian Monitor Dr. Ruff had been working on before the Black Ship menace hit.  At Will's touch, the robotic bird suddenly came to life.  Its eyes glowed the same red as Dr. Ruff's.  "Unauthorized access," it said in a nearly identical voice.  "Engaging defense systems."

            The defense system was a high-pitched screech that prompted Will to hurl RAM across the room so he could put his hands over his ears.  The screech continued for a good minute, until Will's ears began to bleed.

            A hand touched his shoulder.  Will looked up to see not Dr. Ruff but Tom.  Tom said something Will couldn't hear and then gestured to where Dr. Ruff lay in a heap next to RAM.  With a satisfied smile, Will plunged into unconsciousness.

#

            It took three days for Will's hearing to come back.  It might have happened sooner if the medical teams weren't so busy with caring for the more seriously injured from the battle.  During that time Will lay in a room next to a familiar face:  Ricky Raccoon.  The raccoon still wore bandages over his face and eye from the damage sustained during the battle.

            There was nothing for them to say, but they did manage to type out messages to each other using a portable computer.  Ricky's recovery was proceeding slowly, but the doctors assured him he would have full use of his eye, much as they assured Will his hearing would be fully restored.

            Their only visitor was Tom, who had to deliver the bad news that no progress had been made on the search for Jessie.  Work was nearing completion on the Cerberus, which was expected to arrive in the system within another three days.  Meanwhile, frantic repairs continued in orbit to get as many ships battle ready as possible.

            Tom was sitting in the hospital room telling a story Will couldn't understand when the ringing in Will's ears finally died away.  "What were you saying?" Will asked.

            "I was saying—" Tom stopped himself.  "Wait, can you hear me?"  Will nodded.  "For how long?  If you were faking—"

            "It just happened," Will said.  To his surprise, his brother hugged him.

            "Thank God.  I was worried I'd have to start learning sign language."

            The doctors kept Will in the hospital for an extra day to make sure.  Once they were assured Will had suffered no ill effects from the encounter with RAM, they released him.  He and Tom didn't get far before word came that Commander Barker was holding another briefing in the planetarium.

            Instead of a graphic of a planet, there was a projection of what looked like an asteroid belt.  Nina Barker pointed to a lima bean-shaped chunk of rock in the middle of the belt.  "This is the former Bulldog Mining Group facility in the Flea Circus cluster of asteroids.  We believe the Black Ships have been using this as a covert operations center even before they launched their attacks on our colonies."

            On a computer screen, Buster grunted.  "I knew that gamma radiation leak story didn't sound right.  The bastards must have killed everyone on board," he said.

            "That's a distinct possibility," Commander Barker said.  She cleared her throat before continuing, "I've run diagnostics of Dr. Ruff's neural pathways and determined that signals from this base were beamed to the doctor, allowing the Black Ships to plant the virus that overrode his systems.  From what I can tell, the initial virus was planted five years ago."

            "Five years?" Spot II said.  "That means they've been privy to everything we've done in that time."

            "No wonder they're always a step ahead," Buster said.

            "Yes, I'm afraid so."

            "We've got to shut it down," Max said.  "Before they find out anything more about our operations."

            "No, we can't," Will blurted out.  All eyes, both those in the room and those on computer screens, turned to him.  "Don't you see?  This gives us an advantage."

            "What do you mean?" Spot II asked.

            "Misdirection," Will said.  He went on to explain the plan that had formed in his mind as he had listened to Commander Barker's presentation.  When he finished, the Mutts and Bulldogs discussed it, adding their own wrinkles.  By the time it was over, Will felt his first real surge of hope in days.  They might finally have a way to stop the Black Ships and save Jessie—if it wasn't too late already.