Escape the Vortex

by Jeanne DuPrau

  “Yes, we do!” Gabriel cried out. “It’s all set up! I’ve contacted Piper. She was locked in their training room, but I got the code for the door, and she’s out and waiting for us right this minute in the Light Blade docking bay!” He wasn’t sure of this, to be honest. It had been almost two hours since he said he’d come for her. She might be still waiting. She might not.

  Chris’s face lit up. “Gabriel! You astonish me. You mean—”

  “Yes!” cried Gabe. “It will take us ten minutes!” He turned to Dash. “What do you say, captain?”

  Dash, still a little shaky, couldn’t take in what Gabe was saying at first. “Wait—you contacted Piper?”

  “Yes, I’m telling you!” Gabe said. “I did it through STEAM—took control of their SUMI robot.”

  “Brilliant!” said Dash. He felt his strength flooding back in. “Get on it, Gabe!”

  Gabriel ran for the portal, but before he flung himself in, he turned around for a second and flashed a big grin at Chris. “Chris!” he said. “Special favor—you can come with me!” Then he was gone.

  “All right,” said Chris. “Rescue operation under way.”

  Chris and Carly both followed Gabe into the portal. Dash stayed on the navigation deck with Rocket, who bounded at his side barking joyfully.

  Ship’s log 2.8

  [Alpha team member: Dash Conroy]

  [Comm link: audio feed, Cloud Cat]

  This is Dash Conroy. Commander Phillips, I’m patching this through urgently so you know what’s happening.

  Tundra mission accomplished. Before we enter Gamma Speed we are staging a rescue. Gabriel and Chris are preparing the Cloud Cat. I am too…compromised…to execute this part of the mission. But we are going to get Piper.

  Failure is not an option.

  [End of transmission]

  Piper was ready to give up on Gabriel. She’d been waiting for two hours, sitting on the stack of crates. It was pretty clear that he wasn’t coming. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. What to do? It seemed there were three possibilities:

  • She could leave the engine room, let the Omega team know she’d escaped from her captivity, and hope they would agree it was time to free her.

  • She could leave the engine room and hide somewhere on the Light Blade, while trying to find another way to contact the Cloud Leopard.

  • She could stay here in the engine room, hiding.

  Flying, she decided, would help her think. She took off from the stack of crates and flew some loops and swoops high up toward the ceiling, and sure enough, her thoughts did seem clearer. She knew that the last thing she wanted was to be imprisoned again with SUMI. Better to stay here in the engine room for a while longer. Surely her team would figure out some way to rescue her before they left for their next destination.

  So—might as well have some fun while she waited. She zoomed around the edges of the whole huge space, made a few quick loops, and then put the air chair into a steep dive and landed lightly on the floor. To her right was a small enclosed room, probably the room Colin used for putting together the elements.

  She peeked through the little window in the door. Yes, there they were, in a row on a counter, the tubes that held the elements they’d gathered so far. Among them, she knew, was the Pollen Slither extracted from the planet Aqua Gen. The Alpha team had missed that one. Should she go in and take it? She tried the door. Not locked. No one would know if she went in. Right now, she figured they were all gathered somewhere, talking about how things had gone on Tundra. She reached for the door handle.

  From somewhere behind her came a clanking, scraping sound.

  Piper’s heart gave a jolt. Was someone in here with her? The noise came again. She turned around—and there was the slogger that the Light Blade team had collected from Meta Prime. It looked just like TULIP—almost, but not quite. What was different about it? Its shape was the same. Its rosy belly was the same, or maybe brighter. It was the sounds that were different. TULIP’s sounds were chuckling, humming kinds of sounds. The slogger here sounded as if it had a cold. It was going chuff-chuff, a sort of coughing sound, and then snorting loudly. It seemed to be trembling too. Maybe there was something wrong with it.

  The longer she watched, the more sure she was: this slogger was not well. Its chunky body was shaking hard, the various parts of it clattering against each other, and its belly was bright red and swollen. Piper could feel the heat from the slogger, though it was many yards away. It was tottering toward her, as if it knew it was sick and wanted help.

  Piper took off. She hovered above the slogger and watched, with growing alarm, as the red belly swelled and swelled, and then as a bright red crack opened across it and molten metal, so fiery orange-red she could barely look at it, trickled out. The slogger stopped walking. All its lights went off. It sank toward the floor as the crack widened and the red trickle became a stream. Where the stream slid across the floor, the metal of the floor hissed and curled and shrank back.

  And with a shock, Piper understood. The slogger’s molten metal would eat a hole through the floor of the ship, and the ship would be destroyed.

  The Omega team assembled on the navigation deck for the post-Tundra meeting. Colin faced them, scowling. “Your mission was a failure,” he said. “You are failures. I want you to go down onto Tundra again and get what we came for.”

  Anna was stunned. Go down there again? But she clamped her teeth together and said nothing.

  Ravi was not so restrained. He gave a yelp of protest.

  Colin flashed him an angry look. “We’re in this to win,” he said. “Are you on board with that or not?”

  “Of course we are,” Anna said.

  “I guess,” said Ravi.

  But to Siena, listening, it was clear that Anna and Ravi resented Colin’s disapproval. True, they hadn’t retrieved any zero crystals, and they’d come close to losing Anna. They’d made it back, though, and should have got some credit for that. But Colin did not spare them a single kind word. That was unfair. More than ever, Siena felt that the Omega team was not where she wanted to be.

  She ventured an observation. “But don’t we have to stay with the Cloud Leopard ? What about the Gamma jump? And we don’t have the Cheetah—”

  Colin didn’t let her finish. “We have Piper. That will keep the Alphas out of Gamma Speed. We’ll return to the planet again in two hours,” he said. “Rest, and then get ready.”

  Everyone turned away in silence. Anna ducked into a portal, and Ravi and Niko followed a moment later. Siena headed down the corridor, confused and upset. She needed some time to think. She walked slowly.

  And then she heard someone calling her name, and when she looked up, she saw Piper speeding toward her in her air chair. Siena couldn’t make sense of it. Piper had escaped from the training room?

  “Siena!” Piper cried. “There’s a fire in the engine room! The ship is in terrible danger!”

  “What? A fire?”

  “Yes! The slogger is melting down! It’s burning through the floor!”

  The slogger. Molten metal. Fire. Piper, flying free. Siena didn’t stop to try to put it all together. She turned and ran, and as she ran she cried out at the top of her lungs: “Emergency! FIRE!”

  Niko darted out from the rec room. “What’s wrong?”

  “Piper says there’s a fire!” Siena cried.

  “In the training room?”

  “No, in the engine room, I think—I don’t know!” cried Siena. She looked around, but Piper had vanished. “It doesn’t matter. Hurry! We have to find everyone! Let’s get to the navigation room and call on the intercom.”

  “But shouldn’t we go and check the engine room?” Niko said. “Maybe Piper is wrong.”

  “But what if she’s right?” Siena was breathing hard. “If she’s right, there’s no time to waste. I’ll head for the flight deck. You check Colin’s quarters.”

  “Okay.” Niko ducked into the nearest tube portal and was whisked away. />
  Siena kept running, shouting as she went. “Anna! Ravi! Where are you? Emergency!”

  No response.

  When she got to the medic room, she tapped in the route to the navigation deck and flung herself into the tubes. Moments later, she popped out again and nearly banged into Anna, who was standing by the ship’s controls, looking out the wide window.

  “Anna!” cried Siena. “There’s fire in the engine room!”

  Anna turned and frowned at her. “What are you talking about? Calm down.”

  Siena tried to catch her breath. “The slogger,” she gasped. “Spilling molten metal. Eating through the—”

  The look on Anna’s face changed to horror just as the ship’s alarm started blaring.

  The intercom crackled to life. It was Colin. “Fire!” he shouted, so loudly that his voice was harsh and blurred. “Anna—call the Cloud Leopard right now. Our ship is going down!”

  The Cloud Leopard’s docking bay, where Gabriel was getting ready for Piper’s rescue mission, was a whirlwind of activity. ZRKs buzzed around the transport ship, doing a few last-minute touch-ups. Carly checked the landing gear, and Gabe and Chris put on their helmets and climbed into the cockpit.

  Rocket bounded into the room excitedly. Carly reached down and pet his head. It was almost as if he knew that they were going to rescue Piper.

  As he closed the Cloud Cat door, Gabe hesitated. He was a little worried. He hadn’t told anyone that Piper didn’t know her rescue was coming late. She might be in the Light Blade engine room waiting, or she might not. They might get to the Light Blade and discover its bay doors hadn’t been opened. What they’d do then—he wasn’t sure.

  He’d have to deal with that if it happened.

  Right now, it was time to go. Gabe opened the inner door of the bay, and the Cloud Cat moved forward.

  —

  In the Cloud Leopard’s control room, Dash was about to prepare the ship for Gamma Speed. He set the coordinates; he flicked the button for the intership communication so that as soon as Gabe was back with Piper, he could tell the Light Blade to get ready too.

  First, though, he’d check in with Shawn Phillips back on Earth and give him a quick briefing on their status. He opened the transmission channel, made the right adjustments, and spoke.

  “Cloud Leopard calling Commander Phillips,” he said. “Dash here, please come in.”

  He waited, listening to the silent reaches of space.

  After several seconds, a faint crackling sounded, and then came the familiar voice. “Phillips here. Glad to hear from you, Dash. How’s everything going?”

  Dash took a breath, about to answer, but before he could speak, the intership line buzzed, and buzzed again, furiously.

  He picked it up. “Cloud Leopard,” he said. “Hold a sec.”

  But words came at him in a great rush, so fast he could barely understand them.

  “Slow down!” he said. “Who is this?”

  Phillips’s voice came through faintly from the other channel. “Dash? What’s going on?”

  From the intership com, the voice rose to a shriek. “Dash! Our ship is on fire! We had to evacuate! We’re on the Clipper, coming your way!”

  He realized who was speaking to him. “Anna,” he said. “Calm down. What are you talking about?”

  Dash hadn’t closed the ship-to-Earth connection, so Commander Phillips’s voice sounded again. “Dash! Where are you? What’s happening?”

  But to Dash his commander’s voice sounded tiny. He was focusing hard on Anna now, trying to understand what she was telling him.

  Her voice was rising. “There’s a fire!” she cried. “In the engine room!”

  “The engine room? This isn’t another trick, is it?”

  “No, no!” There was a sob in Anna’s voice now. “We barely made it into the Clipper—there were flames all around. In a moment, the whole ship will be on fire! Can we come aboard the Cloud Leopard?”

  It was the sob that convinced Dash. He whipped around and sent a few words to Commander Phillips, keeping his voice as calm as he could: “Problem here. Needs attention. Will call later.”

  “Dash, I need to know—” said Phillips, but Dash realized there was not a moment to spare, even for his commander. He radioed the team: “Emergency! Halt rescue operation! Light Blade in distress!”

  Gabe’s voice came back. “What?!”

  “There’s a fire on the Light Blade,” Dash said. “Anna just called—they’re all in the Clipper. They need to come here.”

  “All of them?” Gabe said. “Piper too?”

  With a shock, Dash realized he didn’t know. He shouted into the intercom: “Anna—where’s Piper?”

  The answer at first was silence, and then a heartbroken wail. “Oh, Dash! I don’t know where she is! I forgot about her!”

  Dash felt his voice rising, loud and piercing. “How could you, Anna? How could you forget her?”

  Anna broke into tears—something no Alpha or Omega had ever seen her do. “We’ll go back. We’ll find her. We won’t leave her, I promise!”

  —

  In his rush, Dash had still not closed the ship-to-Earth connection, so Commander Phillips heard what he and Anna said. He didn’t hear it clearly, because they were shouting so fast and loudly and because their words were blurry with static. But he knew that something terrible must have happened. He spoke again into the transmitter. “Answer me, Dash!”

  No answer came.

  He tried again. “Dash! This is a direct order! Tell me what’s happening!”

  Nothing but the silence of space and the faint crackle of static.

  Phillips leapt to his feet as if to take action. His team was in trouble! Then he just stood there, in the communications office of Alpha team headquarters, shaking and raging at his helplessness, light-years away from whatever was going on.

  —

  Gabriel threw the Cloud Cat into reverse and backed it up. He signaled for Carly to close the dock door, and he and Chris jumped down. All of them had heard Dash’s message. Carly raced to the small window in the engine room’s wall. “Look!” she cried. “It’s true—I see flames in the windows!”

  Chris and Gabriel crowded behind her. Gabe took in a sharp breath. What he saw horrified him. “We have to go and get Piper,” he said. “Right now.”

  “But Anna promised to go back for her,” said Carly.

  “I don’t trust Anna,” said Gabe. “Do you?”

  Carly didn’t answer.

  Nearby, the Clipper hovered, as if Anna were hesitating. Beyond it, the Light Blade burned. Fire flickered in its rear windows.

  “Piper is on that ship,” said Gabe. “In that fire. How can we not try to rescue her?” He wanted to jump back onto the Cloud Cat, go full throttle, and snatch her out of danger.

  But the truth of the situation was setting in. The Light Blade was being destroyed faster than they could get there. How could they possibly save Piper? How could anyone?

  At that moment, Dash flew into the engine room, with a ZRK Commander right behind him. “We need to go—” he started to shout, but then he saw what everyone was looking at.

  The flames licking in the windows crept through the seams of the Light Blade’s hull. The silver surface blackened and crumpled, and the Light Blade drifted, nose down. The Alpha team, usually so daring and quick-witted in extreme situations, looked on in complete shock. Silence.

  This time, there was nothing they could do.

  Find the Source. Save the World.

  Follow the Voyagers to the next planet!

  Excerpt copyright © 2016 by PC Studios Inc. Published by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Chris wore his serious expression. “In order to have any chance of retrieving the element, you’ll have to convince three different species to work with you. And trust me, that won’t be easy.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Ravi said, “They’re werewolves, aren’t they
?”

  “They are not werewolves,” Chris said.

  Ravi pretended to look disappointed.

  “I bet it’s ghosts!” Siena said.

  “Giant marshmallow men!” Gabriel shouted.

  “Come on, guys,” Anna said firmly. “Let Chris talk.”

  “Thank you, Anna,” Chris said. But before he could say anything else, Anna said, “It’s vampires, isn’t it? Bloodsucking vampires?”

  They all laughed again. Anna grinned.

  Chris laid his head on the table. “So this is what having eight kids on board one spaceship is going to be like.”

  “Teenagers,” Carly corrected him. “We’re all thirteen now.”

  Before someone could point out that they’d celebrated everyone’s thirteenth birthday during their voyage except his, Dash quickly jumped in. “Sorry, Chris. We’ll try to be more mature. Won’t we, guys?” Everyone grumbled good-naturedly, but agreed. “So what’s so bad on this planet?” he asked.

  “Well, you need to gather fresh Dragon Cinder,” Chris explained. “That’s going to require working with the various life-forms of the planet. First there are the elves, whose trust you will need to gain right away.”

  “Elves?” Ravi repeated.

  “Yes,” Chris answered. “You will need them as allies. Fortunately, their language is not that different from your own, so communicating with them won’t require the use of your translator.”

  “That sounds like a cakewalk,” Ravi said. “What else ya got?”

  “Ogres,” Chris said.

  “Sweet!”

  Everyone turned to look at Gabriel as though he’d lost his mind.

  “What?” he said with a shrug. “That Shrek guy is cool, right?”

  “Actually,” Chris said, “ogres are terrible creatures. They attack the peaceful elves on a whim and will do anything to hoard as much silver and metal as they can. They are cruel, angry, and spiteful.”

  “They sound lovely,” Piper said. “Let’s steer clear of them, shall we?”