Chapter 31: A Tough Decision
Jimmy, Cindy, and Nick were all turning their rockets in circles, looking for any sign of their lost friend. "How could we not have noticed that he was gone?" Jimmy angrily shouted.
"We were pretty busy saving our own skins!" Cindy defended them, but even she knew that they had made a big mistake by not looking out for each other.
"When was the last time anyone saw him?" Jimmy asked.
"I think it was right after we came through that first wave of rocks," Nick anxiously answered while continuing to look around for his best student.
Libby was dead silent on her end, staring at the monitors in front of her. Everyone back in Jimmy's lab noticed this.
"Libby? Can you hear me?" Cindy asked.
"He's gone?" Libby quietly moaned.
"He's not gone, Libby!" Jimmy shouted. "We're going to go back and find him, but we need your help. Focus, Libby. For Sheen," he pleaded.
Libby continued staring blankly at the monitors for a moment before blinking a few times and nodding her head. "Of course," she weakly whispered. She cleared her throat and repeated, "Of course," more forcefully.
"Good," Jimmy said. "We need to get his location. Lock on to his rocket's tracing device and send me the data of his position.
Libby took a deep breath and felt a comforting presence near her. She looked to her left and saw that Carl had put a hand on her shoulder. He seemed confused and nervous, but the meaning behind the gesture was clear. He felt for her and would help her.
Libby began to rapidly type several commands. "Damn it," she loudly swore.
"What is it?" Nick asked while slowly flying his rocket around in circles.
"I can't get a signal from his tracer. That means one of three things. Either he's in the dense part of the belt and the asteroids are blocking the signal, his rocket is destroyed, or both."
Jimmy closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Then run a search for his DNA. Give me bio-scans, location, all the data you can gather."
Libby pressed a few more keys and then slammed her fist onto the table. "I can't do that either, Jimmy. The satellites on Little Boy allowed me to strengthen your lab's signals to run DNA searches in space. They're destroyed now. Your lab doesn't have nearly enough power for me to run a DNA scan that far out into space."
Jimmy lay back in his seat and tried to remain calm. It didn't work. He slammed his fists into his seat and kicked the wall of his rocket beneath the dashboard.
"What are you saying?" Cindy asked Libby. "You can't do anything to find him? We're on our own?"
"Yeah, you're on your own," Libby spat back, not liking the fact that Cindy seemed to be implying that she wasn't trying hard enough to save her boyfriend.
Everyone on the rockets was silent for a few moments. After what seemed like an eternity, Jimmy grabbed his headset's microphone and held it close to his mouth. "Alright, I'm going back into the asteroid belt to rescue him. I'll be back."
He started to gun his rocket's engines, but Nick immediately parked his rocket in front of Jimmy's, blocking his path. "Jimmy, how are you going to go back? We've got three rockets. There are no extra ships for a rescue mission!"
"What's wrong with the one I'm in right now?" Jimmy angrily asked while flipping several more switches in his rocket. He strafed to the left in an attempt to get around Nick, but his friend simply followed him and continued to block his path.
"How about the fact that you've got thirty-something kids in there with you?" Nick shot at him. "You barely got through that asteroid belt the first time. How are you going to go back in, perform some sort of rescue operation, and get back out in one piece? You can't risk the lives of the kids in that rocket."
There was a tense moment of silence. Cindy sat in silence, staring at the two boys in front of her arguing over Sheen's life. They sat directly across from one another, looking each other in the eyes.
"You're right, it's suicidal," Jimmy answered, his gaze unwavering. "But if it were the other way around, Sheen would go back for me."
"You can't risk thirty kids' lives for one!" Nick shouted.
"We'll land on a nearby planet," Jimmy explained. "Yours and Cindy's rocket can wait there. I'll let everyone off of my rocket and they can wait on the surface until I return. Alright?"
Nick shook his head. "You just said that this rescue mission is suicidal. That means you probably wouldn't be coming back. And if you and your rocket are destroyed, how am I going to get all of the kids on the surface of that planet back home? Mine and Cindy's rockets are full, Jimmy! We'd have to leave them there to die!"
Jimmy was getting furious at this point. "I can't leave Sheen there to die!"
"He's already dead!" Nick screamed, the veins in his neck popping out. Everyone gasped at the bluntness of his remark. He saw Jimmy cringe and heard Libby moan. "I'm sorry, but you know it's true. If he's still floating around, the asteroids are pounding him. If he crashed into something, he wouldn't have survived the impact. I know he's your friend, but you can't let your emotions cloud your judgment," he sorrowfully told Jimmy.
Jimmy shot Nick an icy glare and slowly shook his head. "No. He's not dead. He doesn't die that easy. He's out there, waiting for me to rescue him. I'm not going to just walk away and leave him to die."
Cindy had been a spectator up to this point, but she finally grabbed her microphone. "Jimmy? He's right."
Jimmy froze and stared in Cindy's direction. She looked like she had been shot; it was the hardest thing that she had ever had to say. "What?" he asked in disbelief.
Cindy looked away as a few tears rolled down her cheek. "Jimmy, if this were any other situation, I'd agree with you. Hell, I'd go with you. But this is suicidal. And if you want to risk your life to save your friend's, I think you should be allowed to. I would do the same for Libby. But there is no way that you can save him by only risking your life. The only way to go back and save him is to risk dozens of other lives. It doesn't make sense."
Jimmy continued to glare at her for a moment, but quickly looked down at let the tears he had been holding in escape from his eyes. He cried for a moment before wiping his nose and looking back up, trading angry glances with Nick and Cindy. "What about Libby?" he pleaded. "You want me to just tell her that we're leaving her boyfriend behind to die?"
They all suddenly froze. "Libby," the three of them whispered at once. They finally remembered that Libby was listening to this entire conversation, hearing Cindy and Nick arguing that Sheen should be cast aside and left to die.
"I can speak for myself," she told Jimmy in a monotonous, emotionless tone. Here voice did seem older, as if the past five minutes had aged her five years. "Is there no way we can save him?" she whispered.
"Go ahead. Answer her," Jimmy spat at Cindy.
Cindy almost shot Jimmy one of her dirty looks, but thought better of it. "Libby, our rockets are heavily damaged. It's suicidal to go back in there. And not just suicidal for the pilot. All the passengers in the rocket would have to be dumped on a planet to wait for their ride to come back. And if it didn't, they'd have no way home. They'd be left there to die."
Cindy waited for a response, but there was none. "Libby, I know how much he meant to you," she struggled to say, "but we can't go back."
Jimmy waited for Libby to argue, but sat back in shock as he heard her response. "Well then," she whispered as a few tears silently rolled down her cheek, "press on."
"What?" Jimmy shouted.
"Sheen wouldn't have wanted you to all die trying to save them. Besides," she muttered before looking away and breathing deeply for a moment, "he's probably already dead."
Jimmy was about to argue further, but he realized he had lost. There was no changing their minds, and he knew that they were right. Besides, Sheen meant just as much, if not more, to Libby than he did to him. If Libby could be so mature as to leave him behind for the good of others, he realized that he had to do the same.
"Alright," Jimmy sadly s
poke into his microphone. "We'll press on," he told them in a nearly inaudible whisper while closing his eyes in anger.