Voyagers: Escape the Vortex (Book 5)

by Jeanne DuPrau

  “I know,” said Dash. “I’m going to be really, really careful.”

  “And do what?”

  Dash didn’t answer. “Stop right here,” he said when they were twenty feet or so from the crawler. He got out, went to the back of the Streak, and untied the rope from the hitch. Then he walked toward the crawler, dragging the rope behind him.

  Sharp flecks of snow blew against his helmet, and his legs were almost refusing to move. But he was utterly focused now on his task. He didn’t have enough extra energy even to feel the cold.

  He slowed down when he got close to the crawler and tried to move as quietly as possible. He was approaching the beast from behind. Was it asleep? He couldn’t tell.

  Carly’s voice came over the radio. “Dash—are you out of your mind?”

  He didn’t respond. He was working with the rope as he walked, tying it into a loop.

  The crawler’s side bulged out. Dash stopped but nothing else changed, so he kept going. He radioed to Ravi. “How close is the Cheetah?”

  “Maybe two minutes away,” Ravi said back.

  “Get ready to throw the rope down,” Dash said. “Let me know the moment she’s near.”

  In one smooth motion, Dash pitched the rope loop toward the crawler’s rear end. It landed on the snow close to the crawler’s tail. This wasn’t a move STEAM or Chris had prepared him for. He had years of Little League to thank for his aim. The crawler didn’t move. So he darted forward.

  Now everything had to happen fast. With one hand, Dash grabbed the rope. He plunged the other hand into the snow and burrowed beneath the crawler’s T-shaped tail, which was, for a beast of the crawler’s size, relatively small—around three times the size of an ordinary ship’s anchor, but since it was made of flesh and not iron, not as heavy. He lifted it up gently so he could slip the rope around it, and he tightened the loop.

  The crawler seemed not to feel a thing.

  “Ready on this end!” Dash shouted to Ravi. And to Carly he called, “Come closer now—slowly—and get outside the Streak.”

  “Here she comes!” Ravi said. “I’m throwing the rope!”

  All three of them held their breath.

  “She’s got it!” Ravi called.

  The rope began to slide sideways across the snow. Anna would have to work at top speed to tie it to the Cheetah before it was torn from her hands.

  “She’s done it!” Ravi yelled, and at the same time, the rope went tight, the crawler noticed that its tail was being yanked, and its whole body jolted in shock.

  This was the crucial moment. Dash shouted through his radio: “Carly! Get TULIP out here!”

  Right away, Carly understood the plan. She spent half a second being dazzled by Dash’s crazy brilliance, and then she hauled TULIP out of the Streak and rushed her over to where Dash stood behind the crawler.

  “Get out of the way, Dash!” she cried. The crawler’s tail was swishing from side to side, but because the rope was pulling on it, it couldn’t go far. Dash stepped away from it, and Carly stood TULIP directly behind the crawler and shouted, “Heat, TULIP! Blast it out there!”

  TULIP did. The crawler began to move. TULIP moved with it, following a few feet behind, sending out heat that to a person would have felt like comfortable warmth, but to the crawler felt like fire. The crawler, it was clear, wanted nothing in the world but to get away from TULIP.

  It moved fast, for a crawler. Its enormous strength pulled the rope taut. Ravi, looking down into the lake, saw the Cheetah tilt and rise, stern first, up the wall of the funnel, across the ridges of the circling current. He saw Anna inside, frantically holding on. “It’s working!” he yelled. “Keep going!”

  TULIP plodded forward. The crawler, shuddering, bulging in and out, and hissing like mad, hauled itself across the snow.

  And the Cheetah crested the rim of the lake, bounced over a bump of ice, landed with a crunching sound, and kept going.

  “Cut the rope!” Carly yelled.

  Dash had his knife ready. He slashed through the rope, and the Cheetah came to a jittering halt.

  Anna opened the door and fell out, her legs collapsing under her. She stared at the crawler humping off into the distance and at TULIP, toddling back toward the Streak. She gazed up at Dash, Carly, and Ravi. She was shivering so hard she could hardly speak, but she did manage to get two words out.

  “Thanks, guys,” she said.

  Beside the silver lake on Tundra, both teams huddled in the Cheetah, waiting for pickup. Dash kept his eye on Anna. Gradually, her shivering stopped and she began to look like herself again.

  “Anna,” Dash said. “We have to talk about Piper.”

  Anna frowned. “Piper is safe with us.”

  “But she doesn’t belong with you. She’s on our team.”

  Anna said nothing, but she began shivering again.

  “We saved your life!” Carly said. “You owe us, Anna.”

  Anna looked up. She began to speak, but then her gaze went to the window. “The Clipper is here,” she said.

  “About time,” Ravi said. He’d called Colin at least an hour ago—what had taken him so long?

  The transport ship glided down onto the snowy slopes, blowing away great clouds of locusts and causing the ice crawlers to bellow in terror. The ship glided to a stop. A hatch in the roof opened, and Colin’s head, enclosed in a helmet, rose out of it. Ravi felt a blast of sound from the radio transmitter in his ear.

  “Omega team! What in the world is going on?! I want to know from you, Ravi, why you reported your location completely inaccurately. I have wasted an hour looking for you, not to mention the fuel for three landings and takeoffs!”

  Ravi winced. He hadn’t meant to give Colin wrong directions. “I was kind of upset,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry isn’t going to cut it,” Colin said. “Get in here, Omegas. We have some talking to do.”

  Ravi burned with resentment. He didn’t like being yelled at. Who wouldn’t have felt upset, after what he’d been through? Who wouldn’t have made a mistake or two?

  Anna didn’t care much about whatever Colin was going on about. She was too exhausted. She and Ravi both dragged themselves onto the Clipper. Once inside, Anna collapsed, but Ravi took a moment to turn and give the Alphas a wave and silent thank you.

  “This isn’t over. We need to discuss Piper as soon as we’re back on our ships.” Dash said.

  Ravi gave a shrug as the ship’s door closed.

  “We won’t enter Gamma Speed without her,” Dash called.

  Dash and Carly watched as the ship rose with a blast of fire that left wide black circles on the white land. When it was gone, Carly walked over to the Cheetah, which was lying on its side. She stuck her head in the window and looked around. She felt on the floor and under the seats and in the cargo space in back, and there it was.

  “What are you doing?” Dash called to her.

  “Looking for this,” Carly said, and she held up the Omega team’s Talon. “I thought it might be here.”

  “They forgot it?” said Dash. “Maybe this is our leverage to get Piper back. But…how could they forget?”

  “I bet there’s a good reason,” Carly said. She slid open the lid of the small box. She peered in. “Yep,” she said. “Nothing’s in there. They didn’t get the crystals after all.”

  Above them, they heard the sound of the Cloud Cat coming in for a landing. It skidding along the icy surface and whirled partway around before stopping. They could see Chris inside, waving at them.

  Carly climbed on, and Dash followed. He felt tired, now that the pressure was gone. He sank into his seat.

  “Mission accomplished!” Carly said to Chris. “We got some unexpected curves thrown at us too.” She gave Chris a quick outline of their adventures. Dash gazed out the window at the white landscape of Tundra falling away.

  “You did well against major odds,” Chris said, steering the craft toward the Cloud Leopard. “And we’ll be facing another crucial
task as soon as we…”

  All of a sudden Dash couldn’t focus on what Chris was saying. Energy drained out of him, and he saw darkness at the edges of his vision.

  Carly’s voice seemed to come from far away: “…get Piper back.”

  Dash bent over and rested his forehead on his knees. The voices around him went on, growing fainter.

  “…a good plan…” Carly’s voice.

  Then Chris’s voice: “…still a couple of problems to be worked out, but…”

  And then nothingness.

  —

  Piper had been waiting for over an hour. She sat in her air chair on top of a high stack of crates in the Light Blade engine room. Gabriel hadn’t shown up. What to do now? She didn’t know. So she stayed where she was. Something had to happen.

  And after a few minutes, it did. She heard the rumbling of the outer door of the docking bay. Instantly she was on the alert, her excitement level zooming. Gabriel had made it after all! Finally! She listened for the sound of the ship entering the bay. She heard the whine of the landing gear, the bump of the wheels.

  She held her breath.

  The outer door closed, leaving the ship between airless space and the atmosphere of the Light Blade, and then the inner door began to rise.

  Rescue! Piper was about to swoop down and cry out a glad greeting to Gabriel, but as she watched the ship roll in, she saw something that stopped her. This ship did not look like the Cloud Cat. This wasn’t Gabe coming to her rescue. Of course not! She would have had to open the door if it had been Gabriel.

  This was the Light Blade’s Clipper, piloted by Colin, bringing Anna and Ravi home from Tundra.

  She froze. If she stayed exactly where she was and perfectly still, here on top of this tower of crates, they would be unlikely to see her. She switched off her air chair and watched, barely breathing, as the Omega team got out of the transport ship.

  No one looked very happy. Anna seemed exhausted, and Colin seemed in a worse than usual mood. “I am more than disappointed,” he said as Ravi and Anna unzipped themselves from their heavy suits and took off their boots and gloves. “This was not the performance I expected from you.”

  Anna and Ravi didn’t answer. They put their gear away, and Colin led them out of the engine room. A few minutes later, Piper heard his voice over the ship’s intercom: “Our team has returned. Niko and Siena, report to the navigation deck.”

  Something must have gone wrong, Piper thought. Where was the big welcome that usually greeted a returning team? And what about the Alpha team? Were they all right?

  But the immediate question was, What should she do now? If the Omega team was back, the Alpha team probably was too. That meant that Gabriel had definitely failed in his attempt to rescue her.

  —

  “Dash!” The voice spoke gently in his ear. “Dash, do you hear me?”

  Dash opened his eyes. Wasn’t he on the Cloud Cat? No…He was in the med room. He seemed to be lying on his back, and Chris was bending over him.

  “I’m okay,” Dash said. His voice came out sounding strange and shaky. “I’m…fine.”

  Chris helped Dash sit up. Then he gripped him by the shoulders. “Listen to me, Dash,” he said. “You are in very bad shape. I’m going to give you a shot right now, and after that I want you to stay still for several minutes to get some strength back.”

  Dash nodded. He sat there, focusing his mind on his heartbeat, summoning what calm and strength he could. Chris gathered the equipment, took Dash’s arm, and gave him the injection, and then he sat down next to him. “Just wait now,” he said. “Don’t even move.”

  Dash closed his eyes. His thoughts wandered back to that icy planet. He said, “Tundra is an awful place.”

  Chris nodded in agreement. “Tundra is a planet that’s almost dead. The few life-forms it has are pretty low.”

  “No kidding,” said Dash. “A buglike thing and a sluglike thing.”

  “Right,” said Chris. “But it wasn’t always that way. I found some clues during the time I spent there about how it might have been, in the distant past. Not much—just a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Fossils,” said Chris. “Mostly in the caves, but some in cliff rocks too. I found the imprints of paws on a cave floor, and the remains of bones. I found fossilized leaves. I’m sure that thousands of years ago, maybe millions, Tundra was full of life.”

  “And then what happened to it?”

  Chris shrugged. “Things change. Its sun could have dimmed. Systems get out of balance.”

  Dash was silent for a moment, thinking. “Our planet is alive,” he said.

  “Yes,” Chris said again. “Teeming with life. The kind of place you want to protect and treasure.”

  Images of Earth filled Dash’s mind: flocks of birds rising from a lake, a tiger prowling through tall grass, a school of silver fish in an ocean wave. Bustling human cities. Dogs in parks, chasing balls. “I really want to make it back there,” he said.

  “Of course you do.” Chris stood up, so Dash did too. “That’s why,” Chris went on, “we have to take very good care of you. How are you feeling now? Better?”

  Dash said he was.

  “Good. Because we have a change of plan. We have to get to our next stop immediately, which means we’re going into Gamma Speed right now. I’m going to announce that to the crew. And we’ll need to tell them why.”

  “You mean tell them about me?”

  “Yes. I’ll do it, if you’d rather not.”

  “No,” said Dash, though his heart sank at the thought. “I’ll tell them.”

  Chris gave a curt nod. He turned and left the room, and a minute or so later, his voice came over the ship’s intercom. “Urgent announcement,” he said. “All crew to meet in the training room. Be there in thirty seconds.”

  Dash was still moving slowly, so by the time he arrived in the training room, the others were already there. Gabriel looked surprised; Carly looked alarmed. Even Rocket had a sense that something important was about to happen. He sat very still by Gabriel’s side, his ears alert and eyes wide. STEAM, who wasn’t too good at picking up emotions, stood by a stack of hard drives, prepared as always to supply or store information.

  “Dash, are you okay?” Carly gasped. “I was so scared when you passed out on Tundra.”

  “Florida boy couldn’t take the cold, huh?” Gabriel smiled at his joke, but it was a weak smile. He was clearly rocked by seeing his leader in such bad shape.

  Chris interrupted them before Dash had a chance to answer. “A few minutes from now,” he said, “we will be entering Gamma Speed. I’ll be contacting the Light Blade soon to let them know.”

  There was a gasp from Carly.

  “No way!” Gabe cried. “You can’t be serious! We have to rescue Piper before we’re going anywhere.”

  Chris shook his head. “I know you weren’t expecting this, but we have an emergency. We have to go immediately.”

  “And leave Piper behind?” Carly couldn’t believe her ears.

  “I know it’s not easy,” Chris said. “But a rescue operation would take time. We don’t know where on the Light Blade she is. We’d have to contact her somehow to find out. We could lose several hours.”

  “So what?” said Gabe. “What’s the rush?”

  Chris shifted his gaze to Dash. “Your captain will explain.”

  Dash got up and faced his team. He supported himself with one hand on the back of a chair. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. Feelings were boiling around in him. This was his team, the people who had trusted him—and he had lied to them. The lies had been for a good reason, but had it been worth it? Should Shawn have chosen someone else for the Cloud Leopard leader? Now he had put everyone in danger, and he wouldn’t blame them if they turned against him.

  He took a slow, long breath. “There’s something about me you don’t know,” he said. “I’m older than you are.”

  Carly and Gabe looked puzzled.


  “Not a lot—just six months,” Dash went on. “Somehow they got my age wrong when they were choosing which of us should go on this voyage.”

  “So?” said Gabriel. “I don’t get it.”

  “Hold on,” Dash said. “I’ll explain. The problem is the technology this ship uses to get us through our voyage and back home in a year. It’s hard on adults—their systems can’t take it.”

  “So?” said Gabriel again. “You aren’t one.”

  “But I will be,” said Dash. “This technology defines an adult as anyone over fourteen.”

  There was silence. The team began to understand.

  “I’ve been getting shots to slow my metabolism,” Dash told them. “The shots are designed to give me four hundred days of healthy travel. But they aren’t working as well as they used to. Plus, I only have so many shots—and so many days. Time is running out for me.” He paused. He wanted to be very clear. “Our voyage will take roughly sixty-five more days. Which means I’ll turn fourteen during our next Gamma jump.”

  His team—all two of them—took a short, sharp breath. Gabriel looked at him as if he were a stranger. Carly seemed stricken—he could see her eyes glistening with tears. STEAM muttered, “Emergency. Emergency. Emergency, yes sir,” in a quiet, troubled voice. Even Rocket raised his eyes to Dash’s, as if he understood.

  Again, it was Gabriel who spoke. “What could happen to you?” he said, all joking gone from his voice.

  Dash didn’t want to say it, but he had to. “Worst case—I could die.”

  Silence.

  “I know you must feel betrayed,” Dash said. “I’m really sorry this has happened. Probably Shawn Phillips made a mistake, choosing me for this mission, and he should have—”

  But Carly interrupted him. “I don’t feel betrayed!” she cried. “It was the right thing, choosing you for our leader. I want you to live! We’ll get you home, I promise!”

  “We will,” said Gabriel more quietly. He turned to Chris. “We will—won’t we?”

  “Yes, we will—but only if we step up our pace. We have another planet to visit, and we’ll have very little time to spend there. That’s why we need to leave now. Piper will be all right with the Omegas. We just don’t have time—”