“What is it?” asked Conor.
“My breakfast is ready.”
Rollan chuckled, then smacked his lips. “The noodle soup’s pretty good.”
Ying smiled. “I know. It’s my mother’s own recipe.”
“I hope we get a bigger cabin than last time,” said Rollan as he gazed out at the ship.
“I just hope we get rooms of our own.” Conor sat on the beach while Briggan sniffed around the pebbles. His crook lay on the sand beside him. “No offense, but you snore.”
“I do not snore.”
Abeke laughed. “It’s like the trumpeting of a herd of elephants, Rollan.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Abeke shrugged. “I kind of liked it. Reminds me of home.”
Rollan looked over to Meilin. “Is it that bad?”
“Hey, I’m not part of this discussion.” She rubbed her panda’s belly. “I just want to make sure Jhi’s had enough bamboo for the trip.”
Essix circled overhead. With one swoop she scared off a flock of seagulls, then she beat her wings and settled down at the edge of their circle. There was a fish in her beak.
“Fattening up yourself, eh?” Rollan asked.
The falcon set to the busy task of tearing and eating.
The ship was anchored a few hundred yards out. It was evening, but the captain had declared he wanted to set sail at low tide. Ying had been equally keen to get his letter to Greenhaven sooner rather than later.
A rowboat approached, a lantern hanging at the front. The boat bobbed over the breaking waves and the oarsmen jumped out to drag it up.
“That’s our cue,” said Conor. He gave Briggan’s furry cheeks a good shake. The wolf slobbered over his face. “Yuck.”
Then Briggan vanished, and the mark appeared on his arm. Conor gazed at it for a moment, then rolled down his sleeve. He collected his crook, moving it from hand to hand, before settling it in his left. He picked up his rucksack.
Meilin kissed Jhi, and a moment later the panda vanished to reappear as a tattoo on her own forearm. She pulled out her hairpin and retwisted her hair into a long braid before pushing the pin back. She slung a bag over her shoulder and joined Conor.
Uraza licked Abeke’s open palm and then, in a swirl of spots, formed an image on Abeke’s skin. The girl collected her bow and quiver. “Come on, Rollan.”
Rollan gazed over at Essix. “Well?”
The falcon beat her wings and was airborne. She rose almost vertically, soaring over the beach and toward the ship.
“Fine.” Essix could fly alongside.
Rollan patted his folded cloak, his bond token. He felt a gentle tremor through the material, as if it were anticipating the wind passing through its folds once more.
Essix shrieked from above, for all the joy of being free.
Rollan knew exactly how the falcon felt.
He gathered his rucksack and headed down the beach to his friends.
Sarwat Chadda is a Londoner who’s spent a lot of time abroad, from Vietnam to Venice and from Ghana to Guatemala. Not quite the length of Erdas, but not bad. In his life prior to writing, Sarwat was an engineer and worked on projects both high and subterranean. He’s published ten novels, all filled with action, mythology, and high adventure, and managed to win an award or two in the process. He can think of no better way to spend the day than in the company of great heroes and dark villains.
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Next question,” Molly said. “How many miles of wire are in this airplane?”
“Um, a lot?”
“Put your brain to work, Perez. Estimate!”
Javier Perez sighed. “If I get close, will you stop bugging me with these questions?”
“Nope. You need the distraction.” Molly clutched her book of airplane trivia and grinned. “I’ve got at least fourteen hours’ worth. Enough for the whole flight!”
“You wanted to sit by her!” Anna said from the row behind, and Oliver laughed beside her.
Javi groaned, wishing the plane would take off so he could lean back and pretend to sleep.
Telling Molly that he was afraid of flying had been a terrible idea. Because that made it her job, as team leader, to distract him—with engineering problems, of course. At Robotics Club every afternoon, Molly always talked while she worked, explaining what she was doing, challenging others to do the same. For her, making robots wasn’t just a hobby, it was a conversation.
The funny thing was, the distraction was actually working. Once Javi’s brain had latched onto her question, the plane became more than a huge unknown carrying him away from home for the first time ever. Now it was an engineering problem.
How many miles of wire? Javi thought.
The four members of Team Killbot, along with their adviser, Mr. Keating, were sitting in economy. Brooklyn Science and Tech had lots of rich people who donated money to the school, and when the team had qualified for the Robot Soccer World Championships, some millionaire had stepped up to pay travel costs.
But first class to Japan for five people? Nobody had that much money to give away.
Even so, this was what Mr. Keating called “fancy economy,” designed for fourteen-hour flights. Javi’s seat was surrounded by buttons and lights and a video screen. All of which were connected to wires, right?
He’d already tested the buttons on his armrest. They controlled the angle of his seat, a reading light, the screen. There was a button for summoning a flight attendant, and a rocker switch with volume symbols. There was even a little remote control for games (which also seemed to be a phone, in case you needed to call someone from halfway across the Arctic Circle).
Javi found himself wanting to strip it all down, to see those wires, motors, and gears out in the open. He’d been taking things apart as long as he could remember, starting when his mother had let him take apart her busted microwave when he was five years old.
He imagined the wires under the cabin floor, snaking up and around the curves of the chair. And another bright web above him, bringing power to all those lights and air blowers in the ceiling—
“Conjectures?” Molly prompted. “Conclusions?”
Javi’s brain buzzed. Each seat would need at least a hundred feet of wire, and there were about five hundred people on the plane. That was ten miles right there, on top of the ailerons and engines, the cockpit crammed with gauges, the extra wires needed for the huge business class seats a few rows ahead.
Too much to calculate, so he multiplied his first guess by ten.
“In the whole plane, maybe a hundred miles of wire?”
“Not too bad.” Molly waved her book. “But it’s more like three hundred. A technical tour de force!”
“Okay, wow,” Javi said, though amazement was the surest route to more trivia questions. “It seems like a waste, using a machine this complicated to fly our dinky little robots to Tokyo.”
“The Killbots are not dinky,” Molly said. “They’re the reigning US champions of robot soccer, junior division!”
Javi shrugged. “May I remind you that the other team’s robots got broken in shipping? We lucked into this.”
“We would’ve won anyway.” Molly’s expression dared him to argue.
Javi wasn’t sure. He’d seen videos of the robots built by the unlucky finalists from New Mexico—scuttling four-legged scorpions that whacked the soccer ball with their tails. In stark contrast, the Brooklyn Killbots were toasters on wheels. Mindless bullies that swarmed the ball, knocking other players out their way.
“Like how five-year-olds play soccer,” one of the judges had muttered
in the semifinals.
And there were, what, maybe twenty feet of wire in each Killbot?
Not exactly a technical tour de force.
Last night, Javi’s whole family had gathered for a send-off dinner: uncles, aunts, and cousins all telling him how proud they were. His mother had told stories of him helping on her superintendent rounds when he was little, fixing locks and faucets at age seven. But for the whole dinner he’d felt like a fraud.
What kind of engineer was afraid to get on an airplane?
“Next question,” Molly said. “How many Aero Horizon flights have ever crashed?”
He stared at her. Was she just trolling him now?
If building robots had taught Javi anything, it was that way too much could go wrong with machines. No matter how carefully he tested them, the Killbots were always doing unpredictable stuff in the middle of a match.
He thought about those three hundred miles of wire in the airplane, the millions of rivets and seals and screws, the engines and tanks full of flammable fuel. All those parts that could break, warp, fail, or explode.
“I’m going to go with … two?” he said hopefully.
“Nope,” Molly said. “Zero!”
“Really?”
“Yep. No crashes in the whole fleet, in forty years.”
“Huh.” Javi felt a relieved smile reach his lips, and his irritation with Molly faded. Even when she was trolling him, she always had a plan. “Thanks.”
She shrugged, as if to say that his fears were forgotten. “Just enjoy the flight, Perez. We’re going to win for real this time.”
Javi gave her a fist to bump. “Team Killbot!”
Mr. Keating leaned forward from the row behind. “Um, guys. Maybe no more discussion of airplane crashes?”
“Actually,” Molly said, “we were discussing the total absence of airplane crashes.”
“Still,” Mr. Keating said firmly. “Some people are nervous about flying.”
“Not us engineers.” Molly smiled at Javi. “Next question …”
“Last question,” Javi pleaded.
Molly looked like she was about to argue, but then a ping went through the cabin, and a voice announced that the doors were closing.
Javi swallowed. Last night, he had imagined himself jumping up and running off the plane when this moment came. But thanks to Molly’s distractions, he was managing to sit here quietly.
“Fire away,” he said.
“This is my favorite one.” Molly clutched the trivia book close, guarding the answer. “What do flight attendants call it when the oxygen masks drop down?”
Javi frowned. “There’s a name for that?”
“It’s secret flight attendant slang. Let me give you a hint: The oxygen sensor gets tripped, right? And suddenly all those rubber masks fall out of the ceiling. Everyone’s freaking out, screaming like animals. So what do flight attendants call it?”
“Um, a really bad day at work?”
“Nope.” Molly gave him a pleased smile. “They call it a ‘rubber jungle.’ Get it? Because everyone goes primal, and there’s all those masks hanging down like vines! And usually it’s just an accident, because of a broken sensor.”
Javi tried to smile back at her, but now he was thinking about those hundreds of masks up in the ceiling, each tightly wound in its little compartment, like snakes ready to spring out and start a panic.
Just one more thing that could go wrong.
Copyright © 2018 by Scholastic Inc.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017964209
ISBN 978-1-338-11671-7
First edition, May 2018
Cover illustration by Angelo Rinaldi
Cover design by Charice Silverman & Rocco Melillo
Art direction by Keirsten Geise
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e-ISBN 978-1-338-11672-4
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