by Kekla Magoon
“The wind’s picking up,” Carly said. “I can feel it trying to blow us sideways.” She tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
Snow struck against the windshield, hard, like little pebbles, and the clouds came lower, and then they were inside the blizzard. Wind drove the snow at them in a blinding spiral.
“I can’t see anything!” Carly wrestled with the steering wheel, trying to steady the Streak against the wind howling around them. “We have to slow down.”
Dash pressed against the glass, squinting, trying to see through the swirling white. “Looks like a gap in the cliff up ahead,” he said, pointing. “Can we get there?”
“I don’t know!” Carly’s voice had an edge of fear. “This wind! It’s so strong!”
The noise was thunderous. A powerful gust struck them from the side, and Dash felt the Streak tipping him toward the ground. “We’re going over!” he shouted.
Carly fought hard, but when the wind caught their underside, it pushed full force, and the snowmobile leaned and fell, leaving them sitting sideways, strapped into their seats, one above the other. The driver’s side door was now the roof door.
Carly clicked its lock and pushed upward with all her might. The door sprang open, letting in showers of snow. “Climbing out!” Carly radioed. She undid her seat belt and gripped the edge of the door and hoisted herself through, feeling a moment of gratitude for all those pull-ups STEAM had made her do. Lying across the Streak’s side, she stretched an arm down toward Dash. He grabbed her hand, she pulled, and he made his way up and out.
What struck him first was not the wind, not the driving snow, but the cold. It seemed to come right through his protective suit and find its way into his bones. He was stunned by it.
They both were.
But they had to move. They dropped down to ground level and stood beside the Streak, which lay with its runners facing them. “Grab the top runner,” Dash said. Carly did, and he did too, and they both pulled on it with all their strength. But the Streak, though it ran across snow as lightly as a water spider, was built of heavy stuff, and they couldn’t budge it. They walked around it and tried hoisting it up from the other side. “Look,” said Carly, “this whole part is already frozen into the snow.”
If they’d had a long board and a rock, they might have made a lever to lift the Streak, but Tundra was treeless. If they’d had a way to boil water, they might have freed the Streak by melting the ice that held it. But though they had water with them, they had no stove to heat it on. “We could make a fire,” said Dash, but without hope. What fire would survive in this wind?
They heard some scraping sounds, and in the open hatch of the Streak, a trapezoidal head appeared.
“TULIP!” cried Carly. “We forgot her!”
They lifted up TULIP’s heavy little body and set her down on the snow. Her belly glowed orange.
“Good call, Carly!” shouted Dash.
Carly smiled. “The cold never bothered me anyway.”
TULIP was already at work. Heat beamed out from her middle at the ice locking the Streak to the ground, and in a few minutes, the ice was water. Dash and Carly slid their fat-gloved hands underneath, found the ridge at the top of the window, and pulled with all their might. When the ship came free, they backed up to it and pushed with the force of their whole bodies. The Streak groaned, creaked, and at last sat upright on its runners.
Carly cheered. “Done!” she cried out. “Let’s go!”
But Dash stood still. A wave of weakness swept over him. His body felt heavy as stone. He couldn’t show Carly he was breaking down, so he leaned against a snowbank and pretended to be tinkering with his wrist tech settings. “Hold on a second,” he said. “I need to make an adjustment here.” His heart was pounding at his ribs—thud, thud, thud—way too fast.
“What adjustment? What’s wrong?”
“Just have to get these coordinates…” Breathe, he told himself.
“Do it while we ride!” yelled Carly. “We have to hurry!”
But it was several seconds before Dash could make his legs move. By the time he got into the Streak and fastened his straps, Carly was vibrating with impatience. “I don’t understand what took so long,” she said.
Dash spoke as strongly as he could, which was hard, knowing he was lying. “I had to get the settings right. It’s tough to do it when we’re going a thousand miles an hour.”
For a second, they scowled at each other.
But there was no time for that. The next second, they were off again, moving slowly at first through the diminishing storm, and then fast as the storm passed over them and they came into the clear.
Carly resumed top speed. They followed the route through the valley, climbed toward the mountain pass, and after some wrong turns and mistaken stops, they came to the dark mouth of a cave at the top of a long, boulder-strewn slope. It would have been a moment to celebrate except for one thing: the snowmobile from the Light Blade was already there.
Gabriel stood at the console of the Cloud Leopard’s navigation deck, watching a dot on a screen that showed the Cloud Cat’s progress toward Tundra. The dot moved down and down. A yellow starburst flared. That was the landing. The Cloud Cat was dropping off Dash and Carly. A few minutes later, another yellow burst signaled that the Cloud Cat was on its way back. Good. Time to go and have a talk with Chris.
He hopped into the nearest portal and sped through the maze. In seconds, he was at the other end of the ship, tumbling out onto the floor of the engine room. He waited, and soon he heard the outer door of the docking bay opening, the transport ship powering down and rolling in, and the outer door closing. For a moment, there was quiet, and then the inner door slid upward and in came the Cloud Cat. Chris climbed down from the cockpit.
Gabriel bounded toward him. “Did everything go okay?”
“Yeah,” said Chris. “No problems.”
“Pretty cold down there?”
“You can’t imagine. All okay here?”
“Fine. It’s only been about half an hour since you left.” Gabriel grinned. “Not a lot can go wrong in half an hour.”
“Well, actually it can,” said Chris. “But I’m glad it didn’t.”
They walked together out of the bay and up the central corridor. “I expect they’ll be able to get the element in five hours or so,” Chris said. “If all goes well. There’s the weather to contend with, of course, and there could be some trouble dealing with the ice crawlers. But this mission ought to be a fairly quick one.”
Gabriel checked the time on his MTB. “So it’s eight thirty right now. That means they should be calling in at about one thirty with the signal for one of us to pick them up.”
“That’s right,” said Chris. “And in the meantime, will you be okay on your own? A few hours of free time won’t be unwelcome, I’m sure.”
“I think I can suffer through them,” Gabriel said.
“See you later, then. I have to go and check on—” Chris paused awkwardly. “Various matters.”
“Before you go,” said Gabriel, putting a hand on Chris’s arm. “I have an idea. Can we talk for a second?”
“Sure. In here?” Chris led Gabriel into the rec room, and they sat down at one of the small tables. Someone had left a bagel there. “Want this?” Gabe asked, and when Chris shook his head, he picked it up and took a bite.
“So what’s the idea?” Chris asked.
“We have to get Piper back,” said Gabriel, chewing.
“Correct,” said Chris. “Dash and I have been negotiating about it with Anna, but we haven’t gotten anywhere so far.”
“We have to get it done,” said Gabe, “whether Anna agrees or not.”
“You’re right, of course. But how do we do that?”
“We go and get her,” Gabriel said with a mouthful of bagel. “We take the Cloud Cat. We fly it right up to the Light Blade, and we board the ship, kind of like pirates, only good pirates. We find Piper, and we rescue her. Now.”
“Ah,” said Chris. He gave Gabriel a serious look. “But I don’t see how that would work.”
Gabriel put the bagel down. “Why not?”
“For one thing, how would we get the Cloud Cat into the Light Blade? I doubt that the team is just going to open up the dock doors for us.”
“There must be a way.”
“There will be a way,” said Chris, “but I’m pretty sure that won’t be it.” He pushed back his chair and stood up.
“What will it be, then?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Chris. “But acting like pirates isn’t it. We need a diplomatic approach.” He turned and started for the door. “See you in a few hours.”
Okay, thought Gabriel. His conscience was clear. He’d run his idea (most of it) by Chris, but Chris didn’t like it. Chris was wrong on this one. They had a chance to rescue Piper right now, and they couldn’t let this chance go by. Gabriel would just have to do it himself.
Acknowledgments
Many colleagues and friends have supported me as I embarked upon this wonderful space adventure! It has been such fun getting to know the other Voyagers authors: Pat, D.J., Robin, Jeanne, and Wendy. The whole crew at Random House has brought energy and excitement to the process: thanks to Caroline, Jenna, Michelle, and the many others whose work has been vital to bringing the book to life. Thanks to my agent, Michelle Humphrey, my colleagues at Vermont College of Fine Arts, my family, and particularly the three special young friends who helped inspire me to accept the challenge to travel to Infinity.
Kekla Magoon is the author of several young adult novels: How It Went Down, for which she received a Coretta Scott King Honor; Shadows of Sherwood: A Robyn Hoodlum Adventure; Camo Girl; 37 Things I Love (In No Particular Order); Fire in the Streets; and The Rock and the River, for which she received the Coretta Scott King New Talent Award and an NAACP Image Award nomination. Raised in a biracial family in the Midwest, Kekla now teaches writing, conducts school and library visits nationwide, and serves on the Writers Council for the National Writing Project. She holds a BA in history from Northwestern University and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Visit her online at keklamagoon.com.