A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe)
Page 24
“Ahoy!” comes the call back, and I stop waving my arms, stunned. Perhaps, like my father, I too have suffered a concussion. Or a stroke.
Yes, I’m definitely having a stroke.
The sled swooshes up in front of us and comes to a halt. The dogs are yammering excitedly at the chaos around them, but the driver of the sled barks sharply at them to heel, and immediately they all fall silent and sit in place, looking up at him obediently. He’s wearing a long scarf wrapped around his head, but I don’t need to wait for him to finish unfurling it to recognize who it is underneath. I rush him, leap atop the sled with my wobbly legs, and give him the most gigantic hug in my repertoire.
“I thought you got eaten by killer whales,” I tell him.
“Whales?” Oates says with a dismissive laugh. “Me? That seems unlikely.”
I’m sobbing into his coat now, full-on shuddering sobs. The first good news in days, and it makes me bawl like an infant. I don’t know how he survived. Maybe the whale swallowed him and he punched his way out, like Jonah reincarnated. I’m just glad he’s here. The rush of emotion has allowed the pain to gush out, and it gushes all over Captain Oates’s chest. He holds me tightly.
“It’s all right, child,” he says as I blubber.
“They took her,” I gulp out between sobs. “Olivia. They took her. Marsden and . . . and my mom. They’re gone.”
And he doesn’t even bother to ask how Marsden is still alive, or where he and my mother have gone off to. He just straightens up and replies coolly: “Well, then, I think we’d better go find them.”
I look up at Oates, tears streaking my face. He’s gazing down at me with a kind, loving expression, but it’s hard, too. This is a dude who wrestled with a killer whale under the ice and came back without so much as a scratch on him. If you had to go track down a bunch of asshole Jin’Kai who had kidnapped your daughter, this is the mofo you’d want on your team.
“Yeah,” I sniffle. “We’d better go find them.”
Oates helps me lift Dad out of the snow. Dad, for his part, doesn’t seem surprised in the slightest that Oates is alive, although he’s disappointed that there are no actual penguins on the sled.
“We’ll need to get Cole and the others from the camp,” I say as I settle myself next to Dad on the sled. “Cole, Ducky, the Almiri, the hybrids. All of them. And then we’re finding a way out of here. If Bernard can walk all the way to Cape Crozier from the coast, we can find a way back out. Together.”
“I see,” Oates says. Then, slowly: “There are many Almiri still at the camp who want nothing to do with you and your new friends.”
“They can remain here if they want,” I say matter-of-factly. “Or they can come with. But they sure as hell better stay out of my way.”
Oates looks at my superserious face and nods. He slides effortlessly into his seat on the sled. The dogs sit with their heads turned, watching him anxiously, tails wagging, eager to get running again.
“All right, then, my dear,” he says, giving me a small nod. “What are we waiting for?”
MARTIN LEICHT lives in Pennsylvania. A master’s graduate from the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU, Martin decided at the age of three that he wanted to be a writer, much to the chagrin of his grandfather, who hoped he’d become either an accountant or a bookie.
ISLA NEAL grew up in a ski resort town in Southern California, where she quickly mastered the fine art of falling over on a ski slope. A former children’s book editor, she earned her MFA in creative writing for children and teens at the New School in New York City. She currently lives in Pennsylvania. Martin and Isla’s first novel was Mothership, the first in the Ever-Expanding Universe series.
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Mothership
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An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Lisa Graff and Martin Leicht
Jacket photographs copyright © 2013 by Ali Smith
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Jacket design by Lizzy Bromley
Interior design by Hilary Zarycky
Jacket design by Lizzy Bromley
Jacket photographs by Ali Smith
The text for this book is set in Electra.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leicht, Martin.
A stranger thing / Martin Leicht and Isla Neal. — First edition.
pages cm. — (The ever-expanding universe ; [2])
Summary: “Elvie Nara is sequestered away by the Almiri after her baby is born and it is not what was expected”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4424-2963-5 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4424-2965-9 (eBook)
[1. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 2. Babies—Fiction. 3. War—Fiction.
4. Antarctica—Fiction. 5. Science fiction.] I. Neal, Isla. II. Title.
PZ7.L53283Str 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2013025253
Contents
Epigraph
Chapter One: In Which our Heroine Is Licked by a Bear
Chapter Two: In Which Ducky Barfs for Hours
Chapter Three: Wherein, Against All odds, our Little Band of Misfits Avoids Making a Single Vanilla Ice Reference . . . Except This one
Chapter Four: Wherein Cabin Fever Gives Way to Disco Fever (if by “Disco Fever” You Mean “Invasion”)
Chapter Five: Wherein our Heroine Is All, Like, Whoa
Chapter Six: In Which the Ice Begins to Crack
Chapter Seven: In Which our Group Realizes They’re Going to Need a Bigger Float
Chapter Eight: In Which the Family Nara Visits a Ghost Ship
Chapter Nine: Wherein old Enemies Become New Not-So-Much Enemies
Chapter Ten: In Which an Ice-Cold Dip Lands our Heroine in Hot Water
Chapter Eleven: Wherein the Baddies Give Stan Winston a Run for His Money
Chapter Twelve: Wherein the Benefits of Fusion-Powered Transportation Become Abundantly Clear
Chapter Thirteen: In Which the Best-Laid Plans Fly Right out the Window
About Martin Leicht & Isla Neal
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