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to talk without help of the headsets both of us wore. The vibrations of the helicopter engines rumbled through my body as I answered the general’s question.
    â€œWe’re up against someone wanting me dead,” I said. Only a half hour had passed since soldiers had whisked all of us out of the media conference center. I was still shaky. I sat in a new wheelchair, taken from a hospital. It had no electric motor. And it seemed far too heavy with Earth gravity.
    â€œWhat else?” Cannon said.
    â€œThere’s your son,” I answered. “He’s still missing. I know you want to find him.”
    Cannon nodded. Beyond his large, square head, I saw the endless blue of the ocean through the window of the helicopter. All I had to do was turn the other way to see the green and brown of the shoreline, with the ribbons of highway and an occasional inland city.
    â€œI want my son,” the general said. There was a catch in his voice. “Nothing is truer than that. Just like the robot kids want to find their parents.”
    It hadn’t been that long since Cannon had discovered his son was still alive. Although it appeared he’d drowned in a boating accident, Chad’s body had never been found. Then one day a stranger had walked up to the general on the street and told him that Chad was alive and being held hostage. Once Cannon found out about the robot control, he assumed the robot-control operation had been done to his son too. Just like it had been done to hundreds of other kids across the world, all kidnapped in situations that made it look like deaths where the bodies couldn’t be found. And each of those kids was a child of a high-ranking politician, World United Federation official, or Combat Force general.
    Twenty-four kids made up each group, called a pod , and there were 10 pods total. Nine of the pods of kids had been rescued. But when they arrived at the location of the 10th pod, the jelly tubes were empty. Those were the kids who were probably on the Moon, held hostage to do tantalum mining.
    â€œYet,” Cannon said, interrupting my thoughts, “this is even bigger than what matters to you or me. Or for that matter, to all the other robot-control kids.”
    The nine pods of rescued kids were now safe in the mountain retreat in Parker, Arizona. There the Combat Force was conducting DNA tests on their blood samples to help match them to their parents. Most of the kids were still in shock, for it was only recently they’d found out their parents were alive. They’d assumed they were orphans. Ashley too. She could have had the DNA test in D.C. but wanted the chance to be with some of her pod brothers and sisters before she went to the Moon with me to look for the last pod.
    As I was thinking this, Cannon stopped speaking, as if he, too, were lost in thought.
    I let my gaze drift to the horizon of endless ocean. It fascinated me. All that water, when on Mars there was nothing. No water. Which meant no life. Why was it that Earth had that one-in-a-hundred-billion-billion-billion chance that led to the right combination of sunlight and water and oxygen that allowed life? Most of my life involved science of one sort or another, so I thought about this a lot. Some people believe this happened through random chance. But for me, the more I learned about science, the more it pointed me toward God.
    â€œTyce.”
    I looked at Cannon.
    â€œI wish I could tell you more of what’s happening,” he said.
    â€œWhat’s happening?”
    He looked sad, tired. “There’s some unfair stuff that I …” He took a breath. “Look, about the bomb. Don’t worry. All right?”
    â€œBut it was a big bomb. Bad bomb. Like blow-up-and-make-lots-of-noise bomb. I—”
    â€œDon’t worry. That’s all I can say.”
    This is what he’d been thinking about? That I shouldn’t be afraid of bombs? Before I could say anything