"Okay, fine," I said to Paul. "I"m turning off the heat cell, and then we can lower down."
Paul smiled. "Good."
I reached forward and flicked off the nozzle. The flame died out. The balloon still held us in position. It would be slow to cool. I bent over, out of Paul"s view, and reached for the knife tucked in the top of Lilly"s bag. Then, I took Lilly"s bag and Dr. Maria"s backpack and stuffed them into a compartment. When I stood, I shouted to Paul, "Okay!"
I caught Lilly"s eye, then glanced at Aaron. Then back to Lilly, trying to point to him with my eyes, so that she"d understand.
Then I stared at her hard and shouted, "Tandem!" and hoped she knew what to do.
I swung the knife as hard as I could at the lines connecting the thermal balloon.
"Owen, what-?" Paul shouted.
The knife hit the first line, snapped it clean, and nicked the second. It unraveled then tore, and the third line popped from all the weight. The balloon leaped free, bouncing up against the ceiling.
And we started to fall.
But the line was still attached to the catwalk, and as we dropped it caught, jerking the entire craft and making us swing to vertical, the bow of the craft pointing straight up. I gripped the sail lines as tight as I could, and saw Leech hanging on to the edge of the craft as our feet left the floor and we hung in s.p.a.ce, the lake so very far below.
The force of the craft yanking on the railing made the catwalk buckle, not much, but enough for Paul and Lilly to lose their footing. Lilly slammed an elbow into his stomach and jerked free of the other guards. She lunged, grabbed Aaron by his arm and looked down at me. Our eyes locked.
"Hey, what-," Aaron began.
"Come on!" Lilly jumped, dragging Aaron over the edge with her.
She hit the right sail, and her arms slammed against the sideways mast. She slid over it and for a second I thought she might fall right by, but she fell against me, and I grabbed her with my free arm, my other gripping the sail lines and feeling like my shoulder socket would tear apart.
"Bah!" Aaron slammed against the bow of the boat and toppled over.
"Grab him!" I shouted to Leech. He stuck out an arm and pinned Aaron against the mast.
"You got me?" I said to Lilly, and felt her arms wrap around my torso.
"Yeah!"
There was a blistering snap from above, as the line holding us to the catwalk frayed and broke.
We plummeted toward the lake. Someone screamed. Maybe all of us.
The craft righted itself and for a moment we found ourselves level. Lilly slid off me and I grabbed the sail lines, trying to hold us steady. I jammed my feet against the rudder, but it didn"t help. We started to pitch forward, but the sails caught, billowing back at us, and keeping us from nosing straight down. Still, we were falling fast toward the glistening water.
"Aaron!" I called over the wind. "You need to fire the deionization!"
"What?" He looked up at me from the floor of the craft like I was speaking another language.
"Set it off or we die!" I screamed.
Aaron"s confused look stayed on me for another half second, then he glanced over the edge of the craft and his eyes got wide and he seemed to get it. "My bag!" he shouted.
Leech shoved it into his chest.
Aaron fumbled with the clips, his fingers shaking.
"Faster!" Lilly snapped.
Wind crushed against our faces.
Aaron got the bag open and slid out his computer pad. He slapped his finger at it. "Stupid pa.s.sword!" he muttered to himself.
"Shut up and do it!" Leech barked.
"I am, I am!"
I glanced from him to the sight of water growing larger. I could feel fear starting to paralyze me. We were all going to die, killed on impact. I"d miscalculated, or been an idiot to even try to time this- "Okay... got it!" said Aaron.
There was a hum and a momentary feeling of energy tickling our skin, then a brilliant flash from above us. The huge antenna discharged with an explosive crack of electricity. My body shuddered in the current, almost like my bones were heating up from the inside out. There was a wicked hissing sound as the lightning, instead of leaping down to its grounding tower far below, was attracted to the nearest metal object: the mast of the craft.
The mast lit up, momentarily glowing hot white, and then there was a flash of blinding blue, and a whirring of motion inside the triangular metal unit. The ceramic heat cell exploded, shards flying everywhere. Shrapnel sliced my cheek but I barely noticed. I was scrambling forward to see inside the black unit. There was a circular hole in its center, and inside, blue light swirled like liquid. There was a high-pitched hum as the light spun faster, the ship vibrating like it might break apart.
Still we hurtled toward the water.
I closed my eyes, traveled inward, found the memory. Luk was distant, in line for his own lightning charge. How do I fly it? How do I fly it? I shouted to him. I shouted to him.
Use the sails to steer. The pedal rudder will apply electromagnetic charge. You"ll learn to feel the repulsion of gravity over time.
I have about ten seconds, I said, and swept forward to my senses, saw the lake rushing at us. I put my feet on the rudder, pulled in on the sails, heard the engine whirring faster, felt it starting to slow our fall. We began to arc, leveling, slowly leveling, but we were going so fast, the lake getting closer. Closer. Too close.
"Now!" said Lilly.
"I know!" I pulled harder, jammed my feet against the pedals. We leveled more, finally almost horizontal. I could see the individual waves below.
And we flattened out. Wind caught the sails and yanked us forward. The bottom of the craft skimmed the surface. I screamed. We all did as the craft slipped along, racing above the water at incredible speed.
"Whoa!" Leech shouted.
I turned to Lilly, exhaling hard and meeting her eyes.
"Nice work," she said, her gaze still wide.
I nodded. Then thought about what had to happen next. I pressed the pedals, pulled the lines, and we arced up, rising away from the water and shooting ahead. When we were about twenty meters above the surface, I leveled off. "Can you hold these lines for a minute?" I asked Lilly. "And put your feet just like mine on the pedals."
I slid over and let her take my seat. "Like this?" she said.
"That should work."
"What are you going to do?"
I didn"t answer, but turned and lunged at Aaron. He was leaning out over the edge, gazing at the water, his pad clutched tight to his chest.
"Hey, what-?" he started.
I grabbed him by his shirt collar and yanked him to his feet, pushing him out over the side of the craft. "Now open the vent!"
"Come on-"
"Open the vent or I throw you out!" I shouted, spit flying in his face.
Aaron looked down at the waves. We were high enough for a painful impact. "Okay, okay, fine, sheesh."
I let go and Aaron slumped down and tapped at his pad. "Here we go... and..." He looked up. "There."
I saw the giant triangle sliding open in the roof, far in the distance. I nodded to Aaron. "Good."
"So, okay, now what?" he said, panting. "I helped you guys out just now, you know? Discharging that lightning, opening the vent-that should be payback for everything: So, you"re gonna let me go, right?"
I felt my jaw clench. "Yeah," I said, and shoved him over the side.
"Whoa," said Leech. "Dude." He sounded maybe impressed.
Aaron screamed as he fell, and I watched to see him righting his body and hitting the water feetfirst. He disappeared, then his head popped up, arms thrashing. Alive. That was good, except in the moment I"d pushed him, I"d felt like I didn"t care. If Aaron had died, that still wouldn"t have evened the score, but I didn"t want to think like that. If he had broken a few bones, though, that would be fine.
"Here come the copters," said Leech, pointing skyward.
I moved to the back, and Lilly slid out of the way. I looked at her and she nodded. "He"s lucky that"s all he got."
I yanked on the lines and pressed the pedals. We pulled into a steep angle and shot back toward the roof. We rose above the SafeSun, the wind blistering at our velocity, the ceiling of the southwest wall closing in. Brilliant light spilled in through the open vent.
"They"re getting closer," said Lilly. I turned to see her pointing off to starboard. There were little cracks, and bullets splintered the side of the craft. "Guess they"re not worried about our safety anymore!" she added.
I started banking the craft back and forth. Zigzagging. A bullet tore through the port sail. But we were nearing the open vent.
"We"re gonna do this!" yelled Leech, squinting his eyes against the bright triangle of sky.
I thrust us into one more sweeping arc then straightened out. More pops of gunfire...
And we burst through into daylight.
"We"re out!" I shouted.
The curve of the dome fell away beneath us, the rings of thousands of solar panels reflecting like a crystal forest. And above, a pure, searing white sun burned in a cloudless afternoon sky. The ground below was stepped rock and barren plains. To our right, the bed of Lake Superior was ringed with different shades of dried sediment. The tiny green sliver of its remaining water was visible far off.
I looked back and saw that one of the copters had risen through the dome but was just hovering there, watching us go.
And just like that, EdenWest was already distant, its entire monolithic form in our view, shrinking fast. Soon it was only a little bubble on the world.
Lilly threw her arms around me. "You just did that," she said.
"Yeah," I breathed. A week after sinking to the lake floor, I"d flown out the dome roof, my dragonfly change complete, I was something different now, something more. And not alone, but with Lilly, and with this tiny group of people, knotted together, my my people. "We did," I said. people. "We did," I said.
The sky was the deep blue of late afternoon. The engine hummed and I used the pedals to keep us high and straight against wind gusts. The air was hot, sweet with the smell of baking rock, the dry that I knew from back home. That humid clinginess was gone; so was the feeling of being enclosed. Suddenly we were out in the vast, vacant world, and who knew what we would face next?
"Cool," said Leech. He was looking down. We were pa.s.sing over a barren town.
I watched the little model world slide by. The empty, crumbled brick buildings cl.u.s.tered around dirt-covered streets, the sun-bleached cars tossed here and there-it looked like the remains of an ancient civilization. Some mysterious people had once lived here, when the world was different. And we were the G.o.ds from an even more distant past, now come back from the future.
Soon, EdenWest was only a glint of reflected sunlight on the horizon.
We sped on, bearing west across the wasteland.
Chapter 28
NIGHT FELL, COLD AND DAZZLING WITH STARS. I brought the craft down low, a few hundred meters above the ground. The dark was complete, the way it would get outside of Hub, though now and then we did pa.s.s over some little light flickering in a gully or a window. A solitary family, a band of travelers. I wondered if they noticed our ghostly blue light speeding overhead and puzzled over what we were. brought the craft down low, a few hundred meters above the ground. The dark was complete, the way it would get outside of Hub, though now and then we did pa.s.s over some little light flickering in a gully or a window. A solitary family, a band of travelers. I wondered if they noticed our ghostly blue light speeding overhead and puzzled over what we were.
We decided to wait until morning to figure out where we"d go next. Leech needed to draw some maps. I"d suggested we head for Hub, to get supplies, and to see Dad. Lilly wasn"t sure yet. So, for the night, we were just flying due west, based on Leech"s reading of the stars.
A silence settled over us for a while, the magnitude of what we"d done, and what we"d left behind, sinking in.
Later, I looked over to Lilly, who was lying back, staring up at the stars. She noticed me noticing her.
"You"re right," she said.
"What?" I asked.
"The stars are brighter out here. I can"t even find Orion."
"You actually can"t see it in the summer except right before dawn," said Leech, like he had a star map in his brain. "Aaron just kept it out all the time "cause he liked it."
"Oh," said Lilly, sounding a touch annoyed or disappointed. But then she added, "Thanks." She turned to me. "Speaking of which..." I felt her hand slip into mine, her fingers rubbing my knuckles. "Thanks again for saving me."
I smiled. "How many times did I drown? I owed you."
"What we just did was crazy."
"Yeah, but it worked."
"Unless we actually hit the water back there and this is just the pleasant journey to nirvana," said Leech from the front of the craft.
"I think we made it," I said.
Lilly took my hand and put it to her face, to her cool, smooth cheek. She smiled, but her eyes were serious. "You should have left me."
I shook my head. "No."