I stood up. “You have to tell us what’s going on!”
“So demanding,” she said, wrinkling her nose. She strode into the room, taking in the decor. “And yes, trust me. I know I do. If I don’t you’ll just find a way to get the information anyway. Hey, nice hexaflexagon, Savannah.”
Savannah held up her creation. “Thanks. This one has six faces, like the zipper pulls.”
“Well done.” She stood in the middle of the floor. “I’m glad to see you all have been keeping yourselves . . . busy.”
Very funny. I tapped my foot. “What’s happening with Infinity Base?”
“Nothing at the moment,” she said. “You can’t inform the governments of the world that you’ve built a secret space station and expect them to just take the keys and run. Any kind of transition at all is going to take a little time. At present, NASA and the CIA are just concerned we’ve built a massive orbiting death machine with missiles trained everywhere. They’re busy making sure that’s not the case.”
“Oh, no!” cried Savannah. “They aren’t going to do anything to hurt it, are they? Like, shoot it out of the sky or anything? There are all those animals up there.”
“Indeed,” said Dani lightly. “Plus Anton. But I doubt it. First of all, I don’t think they could hit it with anything, even if they wanted to. The U.S. rocket program is a good decade behind ours. Secondly, they wouldn’t destroy anything they could use. They just have to make themselves feel better by pretending to be careful and concerned. That’s how governments work.”
I rolled my eyes. Dani was back to smug Shepherd mode. I hadn’t missed it. “Okay, so what about the Shepherds and Guidant?”
“Well, I’ve tendered my resignation at Guidant,” Dani said. “It’s funny. There have been a lot of resignations there over the past day or so. And a lot of arrests.”
“So it’s disconnected from the Shepherds,” I clarified.
Dani looked at me blankly. “I really wouldn’t know,” she said, in a voice of innocence. “I have been busy with a family matter. My father has been very ill. Thanks for asking about him, by the way, Gillian. Very thoughtful.”
“She is thoughtful,” said Howard, from his Scrabble table. “Dr. Underberg isn’t safe unless the Shepherds agree to leave him alone.”
“Thanks, Howard.” I turned back to Dani. “Leave all of us alone. Are the Shepherds doing what they promised?”
“If I had any knowledge of Shepherd activity, I would be inclined to say yes. I think whoever is in charge these days has Dr. Underberg’s well-being as her utmost priority.”
“Wait,” said Howard. “Does that mean you—”
“Howard,” I interrupted, because those guys with the suits were still listening. “I think she has it covered.”
She smiled at me. I took a risk and smiled back.
Mom held out her hand. “Your father’s awake,” she said. “Do you want to see him?”
Eric and I went running.
DAD’S LUNGS HAD undergone some damage due to smoke inhalation during the fire on Knowledge, but otherwise he was in good shape. He was on antibiotics to keep infection from setting in, and still had the IV tube in his arm when Eric and I piled on his hospital bed.
“How’s Dr. Underberg?” he asked, his voice crackly and wheezing.
“He’s in the ICU,” Dani said. She’d accompanied us to Dad’s room. “His body has deteriorated quite a bit from his year in microgravity. Not just his bones and muscles, but his heart, his circulation, his lungs . . .” She swallowed. “They still aren’t sure if he’s going to make it back here on Earth. He’s almost ninety, you know.”
“I’m so sorry, Dani,” said my father. “I want you to know what an honor it was to spend time with him—”
“And I want to thank you, Dr. Seagret, for saving his life. I heard about what happened during the fire on his ship. That was incredibly quick thinking.”
“You can thank Howard,” said Dad. “He told me where to find the fire extinguisher and the rescue device. Everything was burning up, but Howard just kept talking.”
Dani smiled. “Yes, I think we’ve got to keep our eye on that boy.”
“I don’t think he’s seen the last of outer space,” said Mom.
“I want to go back, too,” said Eric. “It was cooler than swimming.”
“Wow,” said Dad. “High praise coming from you. What about you, Gillian? Are you going to be an astronaut now?”
I thought about it. I’d been terrified during liftoff, but the sight of the Earth from space was one I’d never forget. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe. I guess it depends what kind of future Infinity Base has to offer.”
“Good answer,” said Dani.
“Well, I’m done,” Dad said. “I’ll just have to watch you guys go.”
I frowned. He would, wouldn’t he? And not just to space, either. We’d be going off to Idaho soon, with Mom. My thoughts must have been showing on my face, because Dad squeezed my hand, and I felt a sob rise in my throat.
“Not forever, kiddo!” he said to me. “Not forever. If there’s one thing I learned on Infinity Base, it’s that it doesn’t matter how far away we are from each other. You and Eric and me—we’ll always be a team.” He reached out and hugged me. Eric came in, too.
A nurse appeared at the door.
“Miss Alcestis?” she said. “The patient is waking up. He’ll want to see a familiar face.”
Dani frowned. “I’m not . . . I’m not familiar.”
The nurse faltered. “You don’t want him to be alone right now . . .”
She looked at me. “Could the children . . . he knows the Seagrets better than me.”
“It’s not standard to allow children in the ICU. Certainly not five of them . . .”
And yet ten minutes later, there we were, surrounding the bed of Dr. Underberg. He looked even smaller here than he had in his ship, his wasted body and brittle skin almost as pale as the bedsheet. There were tubes and wires in his arm, his nose, and traveling under the bed. The skin around his face was shrunken to his skull. But the machines showed a steady heartbeat, and his chest rose and fell. There were seven of us there in the room: Nate and Howard, Savannah and Eric, Dad and Dani, and me.
On the monitors, his rate of respiration rose. His heartbeat quickened. His eyelashes fluttered. He opened his eyes and looked at us all, surrounding his bedside.
“Seagrets . . . ,” he wheezed. “Where are we?”
“Back on Earth,” said Howard, almost disappointed.
“Ah . . .” Dr. Underberg echoed the sentiment. He took us in one by one, then frowned. “I . . .”
I looked around. Dani was shying back, and I pulled her forward. “Dr. Underberg, allow me to introduce you to your daughter. This is Dani Alcestis.”
“Hello.” She tripped over the word and focused on the bedsheets, the floor, anything but her father.
I looked up at Dad, and he just smiled reassuringly and put his hand on my shoulder. “Let them be.”
Dr. Underberg breathed in and out, then reached for her. “It’s good to see your face. At last.”
She broke into the first true smile I’d ever seen her wear. “Dad,” she whispered. “It’s good to see yours.”
I smiled, too, and leaned against my father. We were home.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Throughout the writing of the Omega City books, it was important to me that, whenever possible, Gillian and her friends deal with things that exist in the real world. Since these are books about truth and lies, I wanted to portray a world as close to the truth as I could make it. Though Omega City, Eureka Cove, and Infinity Base may be fictional, I wanted the technologies and experiments they found there to be things that used to exist, already exist, or theoretically exist and may be made reality in the near future.
Sometimes, I found, my writing moved slower than the pace of invention, and certain technologies (like self-driving cars) became commercially available sooner than I’d expe
cted. Whoopee!
In space tech, we’re a little behind the Shepherds when it comes to work on things like artificial gravity and health of our space travelers. Currently, the record for Americans in space is held by Astronaut Scott Kelly, with 340 days in 2015–2016 (slightly more than Dr. Underberg did, though Kelly is way healthier, I hope!). The world record is held by Russian Cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, with 438 days, back in the 1990s.
I’ve read the reports on the amount of radiation they were exposed to, and the eye damage astronauts suffer in microgravity. Space is . . . not good for our delicate human bodies, I’m sorry to say. But I’m hopeful that if we keep working on these problems, space travel will become as probable as self-driving cars, because I still want to go . . . don’t you?
Unfortunately, just like the tech is real, other aspects of this story are real as well. There are companies and organizations out there like Guidant and the Shepherds who are dedicated to lying to the public in order to make themselves rich and successful. I don’t necessarily think any of them have a super cool space station hidden among the stars, but they can still hurt us with their deception. It’s up to us—just like it was to Gillian, Eric, Savannah, Howard, and Nate—to ask questions, dig deeper, and discover the truth, no matter how complicated or difficult it might be.
Keep searching!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A trilogy is an epic task, especially one that ranges as far as Omega City. I’m indebted as always, to my family, particularly my husband, who walked me through at least three or four versions of an ending to this tale. I’m so grateful to have made this journey with my editor, Kristin Rens, and the team at Balzer + Bray, as well as my extraordinary cover artist, Vivienne To, who really outdid herself this time around. Thank you so much to my writer friends for support: Carrie Ryan, Mari Mancusi, K. A. Linde, Erica Ridley, Heidi Tretheway, and most of all to Lavinia Kent, who actually let me hide out in her basement and fed me tacos for days while I revised this book again and again.
I’m also indebted to those who provided me with research materials, particularly the Space track at DragonCon, which is always an eye-opening experience (and where I first heard the term “hypothermic torpor”), and pretty much everything ever put online by NASA. Guys, your dedication to filming so much of your space exploration, from liftoff to landing, makes it so easy to describe what happens in microgravity. I also recommend Mary Roach’s excellent book, Packing for Mars, which was a gateway drug to so many dry NASA reports and so many delicious astronaut memoirs, and the podcast 99% Invisible’s episode “Home on Lagrange,” which introduced me to mad genius Gerard O’Neill and his book The High Frontier. If you want to read more about what a possible Infinity Base might look like, check that out.
I want to thank Eleanor for turning me on to the joy of hexaflexagons through Vi Hart’s YouTube tutorials. I never realized the real Savannah Fairchild was hiding out right under my nose. You gave me the perfect puzzle to finish out my series.
And for all the readers who have come so far with me, thank you from the bottom of Omega City to Infinity . . . and beyond.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Vania Stoyanova
DIANA PETERFREUND is the author of many books for adults and children, including Omega City and Omega City: The Forbidden Fortress as well as the critically acclaimed For Darkness Shows the Stars and Across a Star-Swept Sea. She lives with her family outside Washington, DC, in a house full of bookshelves, and is always on the lookout for lost cities or stray rocket ships. You can find out more at www.dianapeterfreund.com.
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CREDITS
Cover art by Vivienne To
Cover design by Joel Tippie
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
OMEGA CITY: INFINITY BASE. Copyright © 2018 by Diana Peterfreund. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959247
ISBN 978-0-06-231091-0 (trade bdg.)
EPub Edition © February 2018 ISBN 9780062310934
18 19 20 21 22 CG/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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