The Expeditioners and the Secret of King Triton's Lair

by S. S. Taylor

  www.mcsweeneys.net

  Text copyright © 2014 S. S. Taylor

  Cover & interior illustrations copyright © 2014 Katherine Roy

  Expeditioners logotype by Brian McMullen & Anthony Bloch

  All rights reserved, including right of reproduction in whole or in part, in any form.

  McSweeney’s McMullens will publish great new books—and new editions of out-of-print classics—for individuals and families of all kinds.

  McSweeney’s McMullens and colophon are copyright © 2014, McSweeney’s & McMullens

  Manufactured by Thomson-Shore in Michigan

  ISBN: 978-1-940450-30-8

  Contents

  BOOK I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  BOOK II

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Acknowledgments

  About the author

  About the illustrator

  BOOK I

  One

  The forest was thick around us, the huge Derudan Bast Trees crowding in on all sides, filtering the late-day sun.

  “Where’s the entrance to the cave, Kit?” whispered my brother, Zander. “We’ve been out here too long. The other team must be close and we’re leaving our scent everywhere. Who knows what’s—” He snapped his head around at the sound of something moving in the thick undergrowth and held his machete out in front of him. “We’ve got to get back on the river.”

  “Hold on. Hold on. It should be right here.” I scanned the map again, cursing the hack cartographer who’d drawn it. It looked like it had been through a volcanic eruption, burn marks everywhere and patches where the paper had worn down. There were no contour lines and no scale, just a crude rendering of the river we’d come up and some trees and bushes drawn in as landmarks. Down in the right-hand corner of the map, southeast of the largest trees, was a little drawing, a line and an open triangle, like the forked tongue of a snake, that I knew to be the universal mapmaker’s symbol for a cave entrance. The compass and navigation instruments in my Explorer’s vest were of no use whatsoever, so I did what Dad had always said Explorers should do first: I raised my eyes from the map and focused on the surrounding landscape.

  We were searching for the lost caves of Upper Deruda, where, if all went according to plan, we’d be able to recover documents from the body of an Explorer of the Realm who’d disappeared ten years ago. All of the information that the Bureau of Newly Discovered Lands had given us indicated that his remains and the documents, which would include important information about routes around a deadly mile-long stretch of quicksand, were in one of the caves. But I couldn’t find the entrance.

  “Just a second.” I focused on the map again and turned it slightly, noticing a big Bast Tree, skeletal against the horizon. Something was bothering me. According to the map, the tree was only a few feet from another, smaller Bast Tree. It wasn’t there and I’d assumed it had fallen down in the years since the map was made.

  We all looked up quickly at the faint sound of voices, coming from the direction of the river.

  “It’s them,” Zander said. “They’ve landed. Where’s that cave?”

  “We don’t have much time,” my sister, M.K., whispered, brushing a muddy piece of her blond hair out of her eyes, leaving a long, dark smudge above her eyebrows. “Kit? You’re the map master.”

  I scanned the landscape again.

  “What’s that over there?” I took my spyglass out of my vest and focused on something just barely sticking up behind a far-off tree. “What does that look like to you? Is that a Bast tree?”

  M.K. narrowed her eyes, searching the horizon. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Maybe. Looks like the top got knocked off.” We heard the voices again, nearer this time. It was only a matter of time before they reached us.

  Rotating my spyglass, I zoomed in on the jagged line of the broken trunk. “That’s it. That’s the tree! I was working off the wrong landmark.” I looked down at the map again and pulled my compass out of my Explorer’s vest. “So, if that’s the landmark, then the entrance to the caves should be south-southeast of the . . .” I spun around, facing a wall of rock covered with thick, trailing vines. “This is it! Zander?”

  He gave one last, wary look at the dense undergrowth all around us and turned to the vines, hacking at them with the machete. The sound of his blade against the vegetation seemed horribly loud.

  “I can see something,” he called after a few minutes. “Come on!” M.K. and I followed him, shoving the vines aside. I pushed a button on my Explorer’s vest and a strong light illuminated a disappearing cavern ahead of us. It was large, high enough to stand in, with lots of entrances to other, smaller caverns in all directions. It was cold and damp inside, rivulets of water trickling down the walls. “Start looking,” I told them. They put on their vestlights too and we took off in separate directions.

  I explored a couple of small offshoots of the main cavern, walking slowly, aiming my light directly down at the ground, but I didn’t see anything except for some bones—too small to be human.

  “Nothing,” M.K. said once we were all back at the entrance.

  “Me, either.” I was frustrated. We’d come all this way. Maybe it was some kind of trick. “Zander?”

  He was just standing there, lost in thought.

  “Zander? Wake up, Zander.”

  He blinked. “Oh. I was just thinking. Deruda has these things called Derudan Ground Adders. They’re really poisonous and they’re tiny, so you don’t know they’re there until it’s too late. I remember Dad telling me about them.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Well, they can’t climb. If I were trying to sleep in these caves, I know where I’d want to be.”

  We all looked up.

  “There he is!” M.K. exclaimed. The lights from our vests bouncing on the wall, we ran over to a makeshift hammock hanging between two rock formations at the far end of the primary cavern, about eight feet off the ground. Zander boosted M.K. up on his shoulders, and she used a small scissor utility from his vest to cut the ragged ropes on one side, holding on to it so it wouldn’t fall, and then handing it to me so she could cut the other side. We l
et it down as carefully as we could.

  Somehow, I hadn’t really grappled with the fact that we were looking for a dead body, and when I saw the white of the skeleton, clad in a tattered red jacket and breeches, I jumped back. Dad disappeared too, I thought. Is this what happened to Dad?

  “It’s just a bunch of old bones,” M.K. said matter-of-factly. “Keep it together, Kit. What are we looking for again?”

  “A piece of parchment, twelve inches by fourteen inches, with words in Derudan and numbers on it,” I said. Zander had already started looking through the pockets of the jacket. It was made of a rubbery material and covered with zippers and little ports for lights and gadgets. The guy had been a Neo, one of the breed of Explorers who embraced new technologies and dressed in colorful, synthetic clothing, sporting strange, spiky hairstyles and jewelry with flashing lights that pierced their ears and faces.

  “Get the documents and let’s go,” M.K. said. “The other team must be almost here.”

  Zander kept searching and finally pulled out a stack of maps and notes. “This looks like it,” he said, handing it to me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “You’re sure?” I asked him. “I don’t think any of these are the right size.”

  “That’s all there is.”

  “Okay.” I tucked the stack of paper into the hidden pocket of my Explorer’s vest and we took off, running out of the cave and into the light. We stopped to replace as many of the vines over the entrance to the cave as we could and then we ran northwest by my compass, through the thick vegetation towards the river, Zander hacking away as we went. Just when I was starting to get worried we’d gone the wrong way, we came out onto the muddy shore of the river.

  “There’s the boat,” M.K. called.

  She splashed into the dark water and fiddled with the outboard. It was a new SteamBoard engine, made for small river craft, but it hadn’t sounded very healthy on the way down.

  “Ready, M.K.?” Zander had his machete up and he was looking suspiciously at the trees banking the river. “I thought I heard something.”

  “It’s not starting,” she called back. “It sounded a little raggedy when we pulled up on the bank. Hang on.”

  “Hurry. Come on, Kit. Get in.”

  But I was looking back in the direction of the caves. “He was a Neo,” I said, thinking out loud. “They didn’t tell us that in the briefing.”

  “Why does it matter?” Zander was still focused on the trees. “Come on. Get in the boat.”

  “It’s just . . . Zander, I have to go back. We didn’t get the parchment.”

  “I got everything out of his pockets.” He sounded annoyed.

  “No, you didn’t. I’ll be right back. You get the boat started and wait here.” I started running back the way we’d come. It was much faster this time because Zander had cleared the path, and I was back at the caves in five minutes. Unsure of where the other team was, I pointed my spyglass in the direction of the path and turned on its voice amplification utility. I heard a familiar voice say, “That map is a piece of garbage! There aren’t any caves here,” and dropped down to the ground to keep myself hidden from their view.

  A female voice answered, “But it says they should be right here. Lazlo, are you sure you didn’t mess up the navigation?”

  For an answer, Lazlo Nackley just gave an indignant snort. I stayed as still as I could and a few minutes later I heard another male voice say, “Joyce is right, Lazlo. Not an uncommon occurrence, I might add. We’ll have to go back to the place where the landmark tree was and try again from there.”

  Lazlo Nackley cursed. “Stop trying to impress Joyce, Jack.”

  The female voice muttered, “Don’t worry, it’s not working. Let’s get out of here,” and I listened to the chunk, chunk of a machete retreating in the other direction. When they’d gone, I dashed back into the caves, careful to replace the vines over the entrance again in case they came back. My vestlight illuminated the Neo Explorer’s jacket, and I ran a finger slowly over the edge of the right sleeve. Sure enough, there was a hidden pocket there, disguised in the seam, and I slid my fingers into it and pulled out a folded piece of old paper covered with unfamiliar words and a series of numbers. It didn’t make any sense to me, but this had to be it. I tucked it into my vest and left the cave, crawling along the ground until I was sure Lazlo and his team couldn’t see me above the thick vegetation. Then I broke into a run and was back at the river in another five minutes. Zander and M.K. were still hunched over the boat, fiddling with the engine.

  “Got it!” I called to them, holding up the paper and making my way down to the boat.

  Zander was sweating and he ran the back of his hand across his eyes, wiping away the perspiration. “How did you know?”

  “His sleeve,” I said. “A lot of Neo Explorers used these secret sleeve pockets . . . Sukey told me about them. What’s wrong with the boat?”

  “Still won’t start,” M.K. said. “I think it’s a fuse.” She was fiddling around with the wrench, which was attached by a thin piece of wire to her Explorer’s vest. “I’m going to try to construct a new one out of this wire on my vest, if I can get it out of here . . . Yes! There it is. Now I’ll —”

  Suddenly, we heard a loud crashing in the undergrowth. We looked up to find a Carnivorous Derudan Hippo. It was standing between me and Zander and M.K., blocking my path to the water and the boat.

  The hippo was smaller than the African hippos I’d seen in paintings, with a streamlined shape and a wide mouth full of small, razor-sharp teeth. I remembered hearing about an Explorer who’d come home without his arms thanks to a Derudan hippo. It stopped right in front of me and stared, as though it was figuring out what to do.

  “Stand still,” Zander whispered. “Don’t move.” I could feel the hippo waiting to see what I was going to do, calculating its next move. Every cell in my body told me to run, but I forced myself to stay put. Zander whispered something to M.K. and she quietly turned back to her work on the boat engine. The little outboard motor coughed and then went silent again.

  “Come on, M.K.,” Zander whispered. “Come on.”

  The hippo charged.

  I dove to the ground, rolling away from it, but it kept coming, so close to my face that I could smell rotting vegetation and spoiled meat. I cowered on the ground and closed my eyes, waiting for the attack.

  “Arrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhh!” I opened my eyes again to see Zander leaping out of the water, swinging his machete at the hippo. He struck its rump with the handle end and it turned away from me to see what was attacking it from behind. And then Zander did something really strange. He grabbed the hippo around its neck as though he was going to hug it and screamed right into its ear. The hippo sank down on its front legs, docile as a house cat, twisting its head this way and that as though trying to escape the sound.

  I rolled away, toward the river, just as we heard the outboard motor spring to life.

  “Get in!” M.K. called. I got into the boat and Zander stopped screaming and leapt through the air over the hippo, joining us just as Lazlo Nackley and his team came running through the underbrush. They halted and stared at the scene unfolding in front of them.

  M.K. pulled away from the shore as the hippo, on its feet again, charged the boat. It splashed into the water behind us snorting and grunting, but the boat was faster, and a moment later we were racing down the river, my heart still pounding, my fear only now catching up and washing over me. A shockingly loud horn sounded, and M.K. pulled the boat up to the riverbank again.

  “Okay. Simulation over! Let me see the document,” called Parker Turnbull, the Simulated Expedition instructor. He strode out of the woods around the man-made river and jungle, surrounded by his assistants who helped him create the Simulated Expedition tasks for students of the Academy for the Exploratory Sciences.

  “Hand it over,” Mr. Turnbull shouted. “Let’s see if you passed the challenge.”

  Two

  We jumped out of the boat. M
y heart was still pounding and my hands shook a little as I reached into my vest. I handed over the papers and a small smile started at the corners of Mr. Turnbull’s mouth. He was very tall, six-and-a-half feet in his field boots, with a shiny bald head and a stern face. He always wore his khaki trousers and jacket embedded with gadgets and devices, and he was always armed with a variety of weapons, pistols, stun guns and knives. Apparently, he was one of the best big-game hunters in the world. He examined the parchment. “So this is why you went back to the cave.”

  “That’s right,” I said, “I remembered that—”

  But before I could tell him what I’d remembered about the Neos’ jacket pockets, he put a hand on Zander’s shoulder and said, “That was a stroke of bravery in the face of that hippo, son! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such courage! You remembered that Derudan hippos hate high-pitched noises and you saved your brother’s life, sure as I’m standing here.”

  “And an impressive bit of on-the-fly engineering on the part of this young lady,” said Frannie Quincy, the Engineering instructor, waving her toolbox in the air. “Fashioning a fuse from a wire on your vest . . . Brilliant, just brilliant.” She was a tiny, plump woman, with a lot of very curly hair streaked with gray, which she always wore pinned up with some kind of metal clip, and a pair of brass welding goggles perched atop her head. Her mechanic’s jumpsuit was covered with pockets filled with tools of all sizes.

  “Thanks, Quincy.” M.K. let Quincy give her a big hug.

  Turnbull took a step toward Zander, clapping him on the shoulder again, and stepped square on my foot. It felt as if someone had dropped a piano on it.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Quincy was saying to M.K.

  I was still holding my throbbing foot when Turnbull said, “Well, congratulations. You three are the winners of the Document Recovery Challenge.” Lazlo and his friend Jack Foster stood there scowling, but Joyce Kimani, the third member of their team, gave us a big grin and mouthed, Well done, as Lazlo’s father, the famous Explorer of the Realm Leo Nackley, stomped over in his high leather boots, his glossy black mustache twitching with irritation. He was a tall man, his shoulders stretching his black cowhide Explorer’s jacket at the seams, and he stood nearly eye to eye with Turnbull. “I demand to see the briefing materials and map,” he shouted. “I don’t believe that this was a legitimate result.” Next to him, Lazlo straightened his shoulders and stuck out his chest, glaring at Turnbull.