As we exited the building, I saw what Ames was worried about. A large mob of protestors had gathered in front of the building, just outside the front gates. They waved signs and banners bearing anti-robot slogans. When they saw us emerge from the skyscraper, they started chanting in unison.

  “Make friends, not monsters! Stay away from the Frankenstein factory!”

  Somehow TRB had found out about our tour and seen an opportunity to generate some publicity for their cause. A handful of reporters, including Luke McCabe from UNN, had shown up to cover the demonstration. Vans from most of the local TV stations were parked outside the gate. A news copter hovered overhead. Terrific, I thought.

  Even Bud snapped a couple of pictures of the protest. He gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Tom.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. News was news. I didn’t expect him to ignore a genuine news event just to spare my feelings. Besides, Bud had written loads of positive stories about my inventions over the years. “You’re just doing your job.”

  Ames and his people shepherded us into the waiting limo, then kept the protestors clear of the drive as our car left Swift Enterprises by way of the front gate. From inside the limo, we could see the angry mob shout and wave their signs at us.

  “What a bunch of losers!” Andy growled. For once, I agreed with him. At least FUG wasn’t anti-science like TRB.

  “Duh. Don’t they know they can’t turn back the clock?” Sue added. “Newsflash: The robot genie is out of the bottle.”

  “They’re insane!” Persis said vehemently. “They don’t know what they’re talking about!”

  Persis’s intensity surprised me. And I thought I didn’t like TRB and its supporters! I couldn’t help wondering why the otherwise quiet girl was so emotional on this issue.

  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought she was protesting too much.

  Several hours later, after the dinner, I was driving Bud and Yo home in my Speedster when an idea struck me. “Hey, Yo. Suppose we temporarily replace some of the shock absorbers in SwiftBot’s feet with spent-uranium plugs? That would lower his center of gravity and make his footing more solid.”

  Tomorrow was the weight lifting contest, and I was all about finding ways to improve the robot’s stability.

  Yo’s eyes lit up. “That could work! I’ll have to adjust his ambulatory subroutines, but how hard can that be?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Bud joked. “I have no idea what you guys are talking about.”

  I glanced at Bud. “Mind if we make a detour?” The weight lifting event was scheduled for eleven in the morning, so Yo and I had to get to work right away if we wanted to get SwiftBot upgraded in time for the event.

  “Go ahead,” he said agreeably. “I wouldn’t want to stand between SwiftBot and a gold medal. Here’s hoping he performs like Atlas at tomorrow’s competition.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Atlas … from Greek mythology? The Titan who supported the weight of the earth on his shoulders?” He rolled his eyes at my blank expression. “Never mind,” he said with a smile. “I should have known better than to wax mythological in this crowd.”

  Bud liked to tease me, in a friendly way, about just how little I knew about history and literature and all that nonscience stuff. What can I say? I’m an inventor, not a book reviewer. If it doesn’t have a circuit diagram in it, I probably haven’t read it.

  The banquet had run late, so it was nearly midnight when we arrived at Shopton High, where the robots were residing for the duration of the games. A fenced-off section of the parking lot held the robots’ individual trailers. A security guard had been posted to protect the robots from prying eyes or attempts at sabotage.

  We parked outside the chain-link fence and walked up to the gate. The guard examined our passes, then let us through. After our run-in with those anti-robot nuts outside my dad’s building, I definitely appreciated all the precautions that had been taken to keep our robots safe. Even though all the demonstrations had been peaceful so far, I knew that TRB would like nothing better than to smash SwiftBot and his fellow ’bots to pieces.

  If not worse.

  It was a cool summer evening. Murky shadows were draped over the silent lot, which was lit only by the occasional streetlight. My laser pointer doubled as a flashlight, helping us make our way toward SwiftBot’s trailer, which was located near the rear of the lot. An eerie stillness hung over the scene. Chances were, the rest of the inventors were all getting a good night’s sleep, resting up for tomorrow’s event. Apparently, no one else was doing any lastminute tinkering tonight. We seemed to have the whole place to ourselves.

  Or did we?

  The hiss of a soda can being popped open startled me. I swung the flashlight beam toward the sound. The light revealed a stranger standing outside one of the other trailers. He was older than we were, in his late twenties maybe, with curly red hair and a thick mustache. Gym attire clothed his athletic build. His face looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  Who in the world?

  “What the—!” the man blurted. He blinked against the glare of the flashlight. His startled expression made it clear that he was just as surprised as we were. The can slipped from his fingers and crashed onto the pavement.

  Bud quickly snapped a photo of the stranger.

  “Hey!” I called out. “What are you doing here?”

  Instead of answering, the man swore under his breath and held a hand up in front of his face. We hurried toward him, but the man ducked inside the trailer and slammed the door shut before we got there.

  “Hello?” Yo knocked on the door of the trailer, but no one answered. “Cmon, we know you’re in there!”

  But the man inside didn’t respond.

  After a few more knocks, Yo gave up and stepped back from the door. She gave Bud and me a puzzled look. Too weird,” she commented. “What was that all about?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but take a look at this.”

  The beam of my flashlight exposed an ugly corporate logo on the side of the trailer. Block letters spelled out F-U-G on top of a cartoon drawing of Earth.

  Talk about delusions of grandeur.

  “This is FugBot’s trailer,” Yo realized. “But who was that dude?”

  “Maybe some guy Andy hired to babysit FugBot?” Bud suggested. “That’s not against the rules, is it?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But why didn’t he want us to see him?” He obviously hadn’t expected anyone else to be outside the trailers at this hour. “He looked familiar, like I’ve seen him before somewhere.”

  “I thought so too,” Bud said, checking the display on his digital camera. Peering over his shoulder, I saw that Bud had gotten a good shot of the guy before he hid his face from the camera. He showed it to Yo, who shook her head. “Well, maybe it will come to me later,” Bud said.

  “Count on it,” I said. A born reporter, Bud was good at digging up obscure bits of data, even if he barely knew his way around a hard drive.

  “Should we report this to the guard out front?” Yo asked.

  “Probably,” I said. “This may all be perfectly legit, like Bud says, but it couldn’t hurt to say something to the guard. Just in case there’s something fishy going on.” A glance at my wristwatch revealed that it was already five after twelve. “On the other hand, we’ve still got a robot to upgrade before morning.”

  “I’ll go talk to the guard,” Bud volunteered. “You two head to your trailer. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. “Thanks.”

  “You’re a lifesaver!” Yo added.

  Bud trotted back toward the gate, while Yo and I left Andy’s trailer behind and proceeded toward our own mobile workshop. My brain started to switch gears, focusing on the job ahead. How else could we increase his lifting capacity? Maybe by reinforcing his knee joints?

  My flashlight beam found the trailer, and a flicker of movement caught my attention. A shape up on the roof hastily ducked out of sight.

  Yo saw it too. “Tom!” she exclaimed. “There’s somebody on the roof!”

  What in the world? For a supposedly secure site, the trailers’ lot was turning out to be surprisingly crowded tonight. Was this the same stranger we had just spotted outside FugBot’s trailer? But there was no way that guy could have gotten here before us. This was someone else.

  But who?

  I rushed angrily toward the trailer, with Yo right behind me. “Hey, get down from there!” I shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  A muffled curse came from atop the trailer. I heard the intruder scrambling on the roof, followed by the sound of someone landing heavily on the pavement on the other side. Footsteps pounded on the asphalt as the stranger made a break for it.

  “He’s getting away!” I shouted. Running around the side of the trailer, I spotted the mysterious figure racing for the nearby fence. Forget that. No way was I going to let this guy escape before I found out what he was up to. “Stop right there!” I hollered after him. “You’d better have a pretty good explanation for all this!”

  The stranger glanced back over his shoulder at me. A black ski mask concealed his features. A dark track suit offered no clue as to his identity. I got the impression that he was an adult, but I couldn’t be sure.

  The chain-link fence was only about forty feet ahead of the stranger. I was gaining on him, though, and figured I could grab him before he made it over the fence. I’d tackle him if I had to. “Give it up!” I yelled. “You’re not going anywhere!”

  The stranger reached into the pocket of his track suit and pulled out a handful of glass capsules. Twisting at the waist, he hurled them back toward me. I ducked instinctively, but the capsules hit the pavement in front of me instead. Glass shattered noisily, and a greasy fluid spread over the blacktop directly in my path. I tried to skid to a halt, but momentum carried me forward onto the slippery mess. Suddenly, I knew what RollerBot had felt like when she hit that oil slick yesterday.

  My feet slid out from beneath me, and I toppled backward, landing hard on my butt. “Ouch!” I tried to scramble back onto my feet, but that was easier said than done. Struggling to get free of the slick, I watched helplessly as the stranger in the ski mask scaled the fence and dropped onto the ground outside the lot. He disappeared into the night, leaving plenty of unanswered questions behind.

  Who was that guy anyway? And what was he doing on top of our trailer?

  A scarier question hit me. Was SwiftBot all right? Stumbling forward on my knees, I made it onto dry pavement again and jumped to my feet. My pants were soaked with oil, but, thankfully, I had managed to avoid getting cut on any glass slivers. Wiping my greasy hands on my shirt, I cast a final glance at the darkness outside the fence before hurrying back to our trailer.

  “Yo?” At first, I didn’t see my partner anywhere.

  “Up here!” she called out. I looked up to see Yo crouching on the roof of the trailer, right where the prowler had been. “Look what I found!”

  She lobbed a tiny metallic object off the roof and into my hands. Beneath the soft white glow of the nearest streetlight, I could see I was holding a magnetic steel wafer about the size of a matchbook. A miniature antenna protruded from the object.

  “Some sort of listening device?” I guessed.

  Yo nimbly dropped onto the pavement. “That’s what I figure,” she agreed. “That crook was bugging our trailer!” She tapped the wall of the trailer with her knuckles. “SwiftBot’s fine, by the way. I checked on him while you were chasing after the creep. What happened there anyway?”

  I explained how the stranger had gotten away from me. Yo eyed my oil-stained clothes. “No offense, buddy,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “but you smell like a gas station.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “Dr. Rashid can’t perfect that spill-proof fabric fast enough.” The gloppy condition of my clothes was the least of my worries, though. I stared at the ominous listening device in my palm.

  Who had attempted to bug our trailer? And why?

  6

  Heavy Lifting

  “Fess up, Andy! This is another one of your dirty tricks, isn’t it?”

  The next morning the other contestants and I were all hanging out in the school parking lot. The weight lifting competition had been postponed until the afternoon while the authorities investigated last night’s bugging incident. The slim metallic wafer had indeed turned out to be a covert listening device, which meant that someone had definitely been trying to spy on what happened in SwiftBot’s trailer.

  The more I thought about it, the more I felt certain that Andy Foger was that “someone.” From what I had seen of the guy in the ski mask, he hadn’t looked much like Andy, but that didn’t mean Andy hadn’t hired someone else to do his dirty work. This was exactly the kind of slimy stunt I expected from him.

  “You’re nuts, Swift!” Andy bellowed. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. You’re just trying to frame me—like you always do.” He sneered and stuck his face in my space. “How do I know you didn’t plant that bug yourself?”

  “Now who’s talking crazy?” Yo argued, backing me up. “And what was with that guy we saw lurking outside your trailer last night? He sure acted like he was up to no good!”

  Andy copped an attitude. “I already explained that to the committee. That was just some dude I hired to keep an eye on FugBot when I’m not around.” He smirked smugly. “Sounds like I had the right idea, too, considering all the suspicious characters running around this lot last night.”

  He looked pointedly at me.

  “Oh yeah?” Yo said. She wasn’t buying it. “So how come that guy was acting so guilty last night? He couldn’t get out of sight fast enough!”

  Andy shrugged. “What can I say? You must have spooked him, Aponte.” He snorted at the thought. “‘Besides, why are you giving me a hard time?” He pointed at Sue and Persis. “Why aren’t you giving those two the third degree? They’re from out of town. We don’t know a darn thing about them.”

  “And I already trust them more than you!” Yo shot back.

  With good reason, I thought. Andy’s track record argued against him. Still, he had a point. There were four robots in these games, and a grand prize of $50,000 was at stake. We all had a motive for spying on the others.

  “Hey, chill out, everybody!” Sue protested. “Let’s not get all paranoid, at least until we know what’s really going down.”

  “Yes,” Persis said. She wrung her hands together. “Can’t we just get along?”

  “Okay,” I said. Maybe it had been a mistake to accuse Andy without any evidence, even though I still had my suspicions. “I’ll let it drop … for now.”

  “Gee, that’s big of you. Swift,” Andy said sarcastically. “Remind me to send you a gift basket.”

  I’d rather have an e-mail full of spam, I thought, but bit my tongue. Sue was right. There was no point in prolonging this discussion until we knew more. Plus, we had a competition coming up, assuming that the weight lifting event wasn’t postponed again. At least Yo and I had managed to upgrade SwiftBot last night, after everything quieted down.

  A yawn escaped my lips. It had been a long night.

  “Tom! Yo!” I turned to see Bud running toward us. He had been covering the investigation for the Gazette. “I’ve got news!”

  He slowed to a stop, and we all crowded around him. Everyone, including Andy, seemed anxious to hear what he had to say.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Spill, pal!” Yo urged him.

  Bud paused to catch his breath. “First off, there’s no word on who your mystery man was. The cops checked out your whole trailer but didn’t find any incriminating fingerprints on the roof. Or anywhere else.

  That sucked. I wondered if I could whip up a portable DNA scanner before lunch.

  Probably not. That would be pushing it, even for me.

  “Didn’t they find anything?” Yo asked.

  “Wait,” Bud said. “Here’s the weird part. They found more bugs—on all four of the trailers!”

  “Huh?”

  “What?”

  “No kidding?”

  “Really?”

  “No!”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. All four trailers had been bugged? Even Andy’s?

  “ Trés bizarro!” Yo blurted. “Who would do something like that?”

  “TRB?” I guessed. I remembered the demonstration outside my dad’s building yesterday and all the news cameras that had been on hand to cover the story. “An overzealous reporter?” Although I hated to admit it, this latest development seemed to clear Andy’s name—unless he bugged himself just to divert suspicion. Always a possibility, I reminded myself. Andy was sneaky, not stupid. “Maybe a big-time gambler betting on the games?”

  “This doesn’t sound like TRB,” Yo said. “Bombs are more their style.”

  “Bombs?” Persis repeated nervously.

  “Sure,” Sue informed her. “Remember that explosion at the computer chess finals a few years back? That was TRB.” She made a face, like she was smelling hydrogen sulfide. “What a bunch of future phobes!”

  Bud flipped through his notepad. “I don’t get it. What’s the point in bugging the trailers now? The robots are already built, aren’t they?”

  “True,” I admitted. “But a spy might still be able to figure out what an individual robot’s weaknesses are by listening in while it’s being worked on. For example, you might discover that an opposing robot has a balance problem or a limited range of vision, and adjust your own robot’s programming to take advantage of that flaw.”

  Good thing we had caught that guy last night. Before Yo and I got busy upgrading SwiftBot.

  “Right. I get it now,” Bud said. “It’s all about getting the inside scoop on the competition.”

  “Exactly,” Yo said. “I just wish we knew who was behind it!”

  Despite the bugging scandal, the weight lifting competition started promptly at two. An impressive crowd filled the bleachers inside the gym, and there were at least twice as many camera crews as there were before the incident. I guess what they said was true: All publicity is good publicity.

 

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