The thought almost made me stop walking. Were we trying to escape? Was that really what Mom wanted? Or did she just want us to find the antidote and come back? She’d said to go with Ip, and Ip said we might have to escape. But if we escaped, we somehow had to get the antidote to Dad first. And speaking of Ip, where was he?
I checked my place on the screen. I couldn’t tell what number we were at. It just showed the line moving along with us. On the screen, the path appeared straight, but in front of me, the passage began curving sharply.
“Was this passage curving a minute ago?” I whispered.
Becky shook her head and took a step closer to me. “My ears.” She rubbed both of them with her hands.
“It’s okay. Things are different here. We’re in . . .” I trailed off, not sure how to describe it. I didn’t really know myself. “A place where things are different.” I kept walking at the slower pace. Becky stayed right with me. Soon we passed around the sharp curve, which seemed to become sharper even as we walked around it.
There was Ip, standing in the passage, facing us. He threw up his arms, almost like he would for the ritual greeting. “Ryan and Becky! You are all right!” Ip moved forward quickly, arms outstretched as if to hug us. I braced for the impact of his blobby arms, but he stopped suddenly before he reached us.
“Ip!” cried Becky, and she hugged him herself, throwing her arms around his monstrous middle.
“Where did you get that?” Ip was looking down at the calculator in my hand.
“We don’t have time to talk about it,” I whispered. A tiny light was blinking on the screen. “It says we’re close to 1064.”
“We should be. I’ve been waiting here since I lost you—and put off that Master. This is the one by my count.” Ip pointed his horn to the door on my left, just in front of me.
“It says it’s this one.” I pointed to the door on the right, across the passage from Ip’s suggestion.
Ip leaned over me and peered at the calculator. “So it does. But Ryan, who gave this to you? The Masters will find out it’s missing. They don’t let froms keep them.”
I hadn’t had time to worry about that. What would the Pipe Men do to Front if they found out he’d taken it? My mind filled with his drooping antennae. I wasn’t sure it was safe even to tell Ip.
“It was Front,” said Becky. “It’s big and . . . long . . . with two . . . heads and . . .” Becky’s Pipe Man failed her.
“Big with two heads? There’s only one from I know of like that. The Frontringhor. Ryan, was that the door you went through?” Ip was no longer looking at the calculator. He stared at me with wide red eyes.
“It gave me this. It seemed lonely. Happy to see us. And upset enough with the Masters to help us. We told it we were going to the spaceport, but it helped anyway.”
“You told it?” Ip’s eyes seemed to grow even bigger, and his mouth twisted into an expression I’d never seen. “Let’s get out of this passage.” Ip turned around so quickly that his horn almost knocked into my face. He globbed through the door the calculator had picked, the one that was now blinking on the screen with the number 1064.
“Is he all right?” Becky asked.
“Yes, we just need to keep moving.” I grabbed her hand and went to follow Ip, but then I noticed something blinking on the screen. I had to look at it again to be sure I really saw it: 1064 was no longer where it had been. According to the calculator, 1064 was now the one on the left, the one Ip had picked out.
“Why aren’t we going?” Becky tugged on my tunic with one hand and rubbed her ear with the other.
“We . . . it says it’s that one now.” I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It still said that door 1064 was on the left.
“That’s how it works,” said Becky. “Remember? ‘They can change moment by moment.’” Becky’s imitation of Front’s gruff voice was so good I almost laughed. But I wanted to cry.
“But Ip went that way,” I said.
She paused for a second, her hand over her ear. “Then let’s get him and come back.”
What Becky said made sense. I took a deep breath. “Okay. We’ll get him and come back.” Still holding Becky’s hand, I stepped through the door we’d just seen Ip go through. Suddenly I was choking. Dust swirled around me, and there was a brightness that blinded me even more. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t breathe. Becky was coughing, her hand gripping mine like a vise. I stepped backward, praying the door would be there. We were back in the passage. I dropped to my knees, gasping.
“Where did you go? I leave you for ten seconds!” Ip was behind me, pounding on my back as I coughed up maroon-colored dust.
“We thought you were there,” I choked. “We wanted to tell you it was the wrong door. It was—” I started coughing again.
“You’ve got water in that backpack.”
I realized he was right and twisted my arms out of the backpack. I pulled out a bottle and unscrewed the top, then handed it to Becky. She coughed for a few more seconds, then took it and drank. After I also drank some, I finally started to really breathe again. Then I heard the voices.
“Presumptively ready, though the absence of froms will leave us with some work to do,” said a Pipe Man.
“A useful place eventually,” said another.
I had set the calculator on the ground during my coughing fit, and it was covered in dust. Ip picked it up, stared at it, then rubbed his giant arm over the calculator screen.
I took it from him. “This one again,” I whispered. I pointed to the one we had just come from, the one that had made us choke. I didn’t have time to contemplate this, because Ip got behind both Becky and me and pushed. I barely had time to grab my backpack before I was falling through the door.
Twelve
WE WERE OBVIOUSLY in the spaceport. Behind us, a wall rose many eyes over our heads, but in front of us, it was all open. Giant spacecraft sat at irregular intervals out into the distance. The floor was illuminated, but through the light, I could see up to the night sky. A small gap in the cloud cover revealed a patch of stars.
“Where’s Ip?” Becky asked.
“Shhh!” I pulled her close to me. Ip hadn’t come through behind us, which meant that he was talking to the Pipe Men. Had they seen us leaving? Was Ip in trouble? I tried to steady my breathing, to not show Becky that I was scared, and to look around calmly.
People moved quickly about the floor. There were all kinds of people, all shapes and sizes of froms. I thought I recognized some of them from TV, but I couldn’t be sure. Several creatures about Becky’s size with fat, featherless wings and three tall, spindly legs each tripped by us, so lightly that they made no noise. Another creature with a tiny head and four giant metallic feet tromped across the floor so loudly that I wanted to cover my ears, even though it was ten yards away.
None of the froms paid any attention to us.
The only Pipe Men I saw were two tall ones standing next to the entrance to a small building that sat on the left edge of the floor. They were wearing some kind of covering over their top-holes, and I couldn’t tell if any of their eyes were looking at us.
I pushed Becky to our right, so we could get a little farther away from the Pipe Men. Suddenly, a loud buzzing started all around us.
“Clear. Clear. Clear,” said a loud, calm voice.
I pulled Becky toward me.
Some of the froms who had been scurrying around the spacecraft headed toward the building where the Pipe Men stood. The three-legged bird things headed toward us. I hoped that meant we were safe here. The birds backed up against the wall, and I pulled Becky up against it too. We were right next to a different kind of from, with six thin legs and a fat body with three distinct sections, each one a little smaller than the one below it. Three horizontally arranged eyes examined us.
“Pleasant day,” I said.
The spidery from blinked its three eyes and rubbed its legs together, making a humming sound.
“I don’t understand,” I sai
d.
“It doesn’t have a mouth,” said Becky.
I quickly realized that she was right, and wondered if it even could hear me. It didn’t have anything that looked like ears. But a loud noise stopped me from thinking about it.
The ship was one of the smallest I saw, but it was still as big as half of our house. It was shaped like a lemon, standing up on one impossibly small end. Now it was emitting loud bursts of noise, like radio static amplified many times over. Smoke or steam was coming from near the bottom of the lemon tip. Suddenly it fell away from us, stopping so that its body was horizontal, suspended in midair only a few eyes off the ground. The smoke began swirling all around it, and then there was one long, louder burst of static, and the ship rose up into the air, straight up and up and up until I couldn’t see it anymore.
“Clear,” said the calm voice.
The froms around us hurried off in all directions, all except for the spiderlike one with the three eyes and no mouth, who stared at us, unmoving.
“Can you understand me?” I asked.
The from began shaking, the three sections of its body slowly waving.
I pulled Becky backward and looked around me. Where could we run to? But then I realized what the from was doing.
It was shaking off a thin cloak, which I had assumed was part of the creature’s skin. It lifted one leg and pulled the cloak all the way off, then stuck another leg into a pocket and pulled out a tablet. I quickly recognized it as the kind our Pipe Men tutors used. The from began typing on the keypad with two legs. After a minute, it held out the tablet to me.
I took it.
I can hear you, it said.
As I read, the from pointed with one leg to a spot in the middle section of its body. Most of the body was a deep and dirty brown color, but this spot was much lighter, almost a perfect rectangle.
Becky reached out her hand, trying to touch it.
“Becky!”
The from blinked at her.
I went on reading. I saw you come out of the portal. I have never seen your species here before. Are you in trouble with the Masters?
“What does it say?” asked Becky.
“It saw us come out.” The fact that this from was still standing here instead of tattling on us to the Pipe Men had to mean something. I decided to take a leap of faith. “Yes, we are. We need to get to the Hottini ship. Can you help us?”
The from lifted the tablet from my hands. Its legs were so thin and light, it was amazing that they could hold the tablet’s weight, much less support the creature’s body. Quickly, it typed again.
Yes. You must get out of the open before they see you. Follow me.
“It wants us to follow it,” I said to Becky. “What do you think?”
“He’s nice,” she said. She smiled at the creature and reached out a hand again.
The creature lifted a leg and very lightly touched her finger. To me, it seemed like its eyes were smiling. I knew that this was the most reassurance I was likely to get.
“Okay, lead the way.”
Its eyes twitched, viewing the floor of the space dock. The two Pipe Men were no longer in sight, and no one else seemed to be watching us. It walked quickly to our right, away from the Pipe Men, along the side of the wall, so lightly that its legs barely touched the ground.
We followed until it reached the end of the wall. From there, I could see a few spaceships before the lit area ended. After that, the city lights twinkled in the darkness. Pipe Man buildings were tall and thin like the Pipe Men themselves, and they went up hundreds of eyes into the sky. Between the buildings, assistant wires let off bursts of light as they transferred power, food, and anything else the Pipe Men needed. It struck me that there were no assistant wires out here in the space dock. That made me breathe easier. The Pipe Men never went anywhere without assistants, and if they were using a transport assistant—like an Earth car—at least I’d be able to see them coming.
We set off across the floor and passed the first spaceship. This one was larger than the one we’d just seen take off. It was a perfect sphere, surrounded by short, squat froms with leathery green skin and one thick leg each. They moved by standing on their toes, using them like mini-legs. In their four arms they held various tools and were busy hammering and tugging at the ship’s hull. A few of them turned to look as we passed by, pointing their single eyes at us, but none of them made any move in our direction.
“They’re on TV,” said Becky.
She was right. I remembered their channel. There were no Pipe Men subtitles, but there was a lot of eating what appeared to be raw animal flesh with large, sharp teeth. I hurried to catch up with our new friend, who was now walking faster and faster, heading for the next ship.
The ship sat high above us, on a single long pole that ended on the spaceport floor with a platform shaped like a hand with six equidistant, spindly claws. As we watched, a hatch opened in the hull. Several more froms just like our friend jumped out of it. The door had to be at least seventy eyes up in the air, but the froms landed softly next to their comrade. They looked so much alike, I couldn’t tell which one was which, until the one who had been leading us stepped back out of the group and waved a leg.
Becky and I hurried forward.
“Hello! I’m Becky!” Becky said loudly, pointing at her chest.
Several sets of three eyes blinked at us.
“I’m Ryan,” I said, not sure what else to do.
Our friend reached out three of its legs, and another one stepped forward and did the same. They wrapped their legs together, making a net. Then our friend reached up another leg and waved to us, pointing at their locked legs.
“It wants us to get on,” said Becky.
Our friend waved at us again, then pointed to the open hatch.
“It’s so far,” I said. “How are they going to get us up there? How are you going to get us up there?”
Our friend pointed to one of the others. The second one jumped, and with one push of its six spindly legs, it landed back inside the ship. It turned and waved three legs at us.
“See?” said Becky. “They can jump high.”
And we would never be able to get down without their help. “Can you just tell us how to get to the Hottini ship? We don’t want to cause you trouble.”
Our friend blinked at us and pointed again at the hammock they had made of legs.
I looked around us. For all I knew, we might be at the wrong end of the space dock, and there were ships everywhere, all manned by different froms. They might not be as friendly as these people. And those two Pipe Men with their weird top-hole coverings were back. Was it my imagination, or were they looking our way?
“Okay,” I said to Becky. “Listen to me. We can never get separated. You can never go more than a foot away from me. I don’t care what happens. Do you understand me?”
Becky nodded.
“Okay.” I took her hand, and we moved toward the outstretched legs. The froms bent the legs they were standing on so that their hammock was low to the ground. We lay down on it, and I pulled Becky close to me. Their legs wrapped around us, encircling our bodies. It was hard to remain calm. Then we were airborne.
Thirteen
WE LANDED SO QUICKLY and softly that I didn’t have a chance to panic. The legs slowly unwrapped from around us, and I stumbled to my feet. Then I panicked. I was at the edge of the ship’s cargo hold, staring down at the ground, which was way too far below me. I stepped backward and tripped over Becky, knocking us both to the floor.
“I’m sorry! Are you all right? I . . .” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Now I was staring up at the insides of the spaceship. There were three balconies above us, winding their way around the open bay. Each balcony was filled with identical buglike froms. There were so many of them that their legs seemed to thread together in a mass, and their eyes all stared down at us.
Suddenly, the hatch we’d just come through slammed shut. I sat up and reached for Becky, but my hand hit t
he cold floor. Then one of the froms was on top of me. Its body was hot and rancid, and its legs wrapped around me, digging into my arms and back. I tried to turn my head, to get my nose away from the stink, but one of its legs was pressing my head into its belly. I tried to call out for Becky, but instead, my mouth caught in its coarse, wet hair.
I spit and tried to scream, but there was more hair, and its legs pressed my face so close that I couldn’t move my mouth at all and I couldn’t see anything. My back lifted completely off the floor, into the air. We landed on a balcony, and then we were moving at a run. Spindly legs brushed against my shoulders. My backpack bounced against the floor, pressing my face even farther into the creature’s hair. I could feel more of them around me. The air was moister with them all around, clamming up my exposed hands. The from ran smoothly, making it hard to tell how far we’d gone.
I kept hearing humming around me. It was an awful sound, whiny and sour, just as bad on the ears as the thing’s belly was on my nose. I tried to kick, but it held me so tight, there wasn’t any room for me to move my legs. I managed to twist my face sideways, so I could take a deep breath through my nose. With one eye, I saw the legs flying by me, the lower bodies of the froms that were now looking even more like insects. My view changed to empty space. I felt sick to my stomach and closed my eyes, still trying to take a deep breath.
Then I was suddenly free, kicking and flailing my arms, sucking in air. I kicked something hard and with a curse, opened my eyes. I was staring up from the bottom of a pit. Some thirty eyes up, six insect eyes stared back at me.
“Becky!”
They were rubbing their legs together up there, and the awful humming noise was coming out.
“Becky!”
“Ryan!”
“Becky! Where are you?”
“I’m in a pit somewhere! I don’t know!”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. What happened? Why don’t they like us?”
Escape from the Pipe Men! Page 6