The Lost City of Faar (14 page)

“You're kidding, right?”

He wasn't. Uncle Press took off running toward the impact point. This was insane. The safest place to be was far away from where the two habitats had collided. But being safe wasn't usually high on Uncle Press's To Do list. He was headed right for the most dangerous place on board, and I was right after him. We ran past several vators who were
fleeing from the bow to a safer part of the habitat. There was a name for those guys. Smart. We weren't being smart; we were headed toward disaster.

The closer we got to the bow, the more damage there was. The deck had buckled and split. I could look down through jagged tears and see below to the pipes and struts that held Grallion together. It got tricky dodging around these open fissures. One wrong step and we could have fallen a few stories into the guts of Grallion. It was like running over a rickety old footbridge where the bottom could fall out at any moment. Still, Uncle Press wouldn't stop.

When we got near the bow, we saw the full extent of the devastation. Each of the two habitats were crushed where they impacted. It was a twisted mess of beams, girders, and decking. This no longer looked like a habitat. It looked like a vast, floating junkyard.

“Now what?” I asked.

Uncle Press pointed to several aquaneers who were leaping on board Magorran. They were led by Wu Yenza, the chief aquaneer. It was a daring jump because even though the decks of the two habitats were only a few feet apart, they were both still moving and grinding against each other.

“Follow them,” said Uncle Press, which was the last thing I wanted to hear. But he didn't give me time to think. He ran to the edge of the deck, hesitated only a second, then leaped from Grallion onto Magorran.

“Let's go, Bobby!” he yelled.

Imagine standing on an ice floe as it hurtled down a river and you had to jump onto another ice floe that was going just as fast. That's pretty much what this felt like. The gap between the two decks was only a few feet, but it felt like a mile. I looked down. Big mistake. I could see through four stories
down of twisted wreckage to the frothing white water. Falling would really, really hurt.

“It's cake, Bobby!” shouted Uncle Press. “C'mon!”

Cake. Yeah, right. I inched as close as I could to the edge without getting dizzy. The deck lurched under my feet. This was definitely
not
cake! I waited until Grallion settled, took a breath—and jumped.

I cleared the chasm by a good five feet. Okay, maybe it
was
cake.

“Now what?” I asked, trying to sound as if I were more in control of myself than I really was.

“The pilot house,” answered Uncle Press. “Let's find out who's driving this bus.”

The pilot house where the habitat was controlled wasn't far from which we boarded. Like the pilot house on Grallion, this was an enclosed structure where the pilot, the first mate, and a few other aquaneers would send the commands that controlled the habitat. Whatever the problem was with Magorran, the logical place to start looking for it was the pilot house.

We took off running, but it wasn't any easier over here than it was on Grallion. This deck was torn up from the impact as well. The whole habitat shuddered and heaved as it bounced against Grallion. It was like trying to run across a minefield during an earthquake.

The goal was to stop Magorran. I feared that when we got to the pilot house, we'd find none other than Saint Dane standing at the wheel wearing an aquaneer uniform and an evil, leering smile. But that would have been too easy. Saint Dane may have been responsible for this, but he wouldn't have done something as obvious as piloting the habitat himself. No, Saint Dane didn't work that way. He was a manipulator. This was an
epic disaster that was worthy of him, but the cause of it would be far more diabolical. This was only the beginning. It wasn't just about two habitats colliding. There had to be something grander at stake. So as much as I feared seeing Saint Dane at the wheel, it was his overall scheme that I feared more.

Before we got to the pilot house, the habitat suddenly stopped shuddering. The aquaneers who boarded ahead of us must have reached the controls and shut down the engines. There was a strange calm. The horrible cracking sound of the two habitats grinding against each other stopped. The drone of the engines stopped. The rush of the water crashing between the two wrecked habitats stopped. The aquaneers must have slowed Magorran because after one last loud, twisting crunch, I saw Grallion pull away. The two habitats were once again separate.

As Grallion drifted away, I saw the extent of the damage, and it was pretty nasty. The entire bow end of the farm barge looked like a car after a head-on collision. Decking was bent and cracked. Geysers of water shot from burst pipes. Pieces of beams and struts floated in the water. The dock area was destroyed along with most of the small boats that were kept there. In a word, it was mangled. I'm sure that Magorran looked the same, though I couldn't tell because I was standing on it. The big question now was, why had the aquaneers on Magorran lost control? If our aquaneers could stop it so easily, what prevented the Magorran crew from doing the same?

Uncle Press and I reached the pilot house that was about a hundred yards back from the damaged bow. I was glad to see the collision hadn't destroyed it. It was a solid structure that was probably built that way in case something hairy like this happened. This was the first good news we saw. Magorran could still be controlled from here. The question was, why did it go out of control in the first place? The
moment we opened the door, we had the answer. There were two aquaneers from Grallion at the controls. Yenza was at the wheel, the other worked the array of toggle switches for the many water-powered engines that controlled the habitat.

The aquaneer crew from Magorran was there as well. There was the pilot, the first mate, and three other aquaneers. I recognized their rank because they wore the same uniforms as the crew from Grallion. But there was one big difference between this crew and our crew.

These guys were all dead.

It was a creepy scene for obvious reasons, but it was made all the more so because the crew looked so . . . natural. It wasn't like there was a violent fight or anything. Just the opposite. The pilot sat in his chair, still looking forward with sightless eyes. The first mate was hunched over a map with a pen still in his hand as if he were in the middle of plotting a course, probably to rendezvous with Grallion. The other aquaneers were sitting on the deck near their stations as if they had simply fallen asleep. But these guys were definitely not asleep. Their eyes were wide open. There was something else. Uncle Press saw it first and pointed it out to me. Each of the poor dead aquaneers had a trace of something on the corners of their mouths. It was dry now, but it looked to have been a trickle of green liquid that had dribbled out of the corners of their mouths and crusted there.

They were dead all right. The mystery of the collision was solved. These guys died at their posts under full power. But the idea of five guys suddenly dying was tough to comprehend. It was then that I was hit with a thought that was even more horrific than the sight in front of me. It was like an alarm rang in my head. I reached out to Uncle Press, grabbed his sleeve and pulled him out of the pilot house.

“This wasn't a sudden crash,” I croaked out through my dry mouth. “I mean, we saw it coming, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So if we saw it coming, how come nobody else on board Magorran did?”

Before I got all the words out, I saw in Uncle Press's face that he knew exactly where I was going with this. The crash happened because the pilot and his crew were dead. But somebody else on Magorran should have seen the crash coming and tried to stop it. That is, if anybody else on Magorran were alive to see it. The horrible realization hit Uncle Press just as it hit me. If nobody else tried to stop the crash, did that mean more people were dead? We both did a quick scan around and saw the same thing—nothing. There was no movement. No life. The sickening truth was setting in. There was a very good chance that everybody on Magorran had met the same fate as its crew.

This may have become a ship of the dead.

I turned away from Uncle Press and puked.

“S
pader!” shouted Uncle Press.

I had my hands on my knees while tossing my lunch. I looked up to see Spader booking across the deck several yards away. He was headed deeper onto Magorran and I knew why. He was going to find his father.

Behind us Wu Yenza came from the pilot house and saw him too.

“Stop right there!” she commanded. “Do
not
go onto this habitat!”

Spader didn't even glance at her. There was nothing stopping him.

“We'll stay with him,” said Uncle Press to Yenza.

“You are not authorized to be here,” she said sternly.

“We're civilians,” countered Uncle Press. “You can't stop us.”

“We can't protect you either.”

I didn't like the sound of that. Whatever caused this horrible disaster could still be out there. On the other hand, chances are it was Saint Dane, and that bad boy was our department.

“Understood,” said Uncle Press. “We'll bring him back.”

Yenza wanted to argue, but Uncle Press had already started to jog after Spader. I looked to the chief aquaneer and shrugged. She scowled at me and I turned and ran after Uncle Press.

Spader had a head start on us and it was tough keeping up with him. It didn't help that he knew exactly where he was going. We had to keep him in sight or he'd be gone. As we ran across the deck of Magorran I tried to keep an eye on him while taking in the new surroundings. This was a manu habitat, but the factories must have been toward the stern because the area we were running through seemed more residential. There were several tall structures that looked like apartment buildings surrounding a big park. This could have been a normal, downtown neighborhood back on Second Earth. It was strange to think that we were floating. Stranger still was the fact that the place was deserted. There wasn't a soul to be seen—living or dead. It gave me hope that everyone had evacuated Magorran before they met the same deadly fate as the crew.

Up ahead Spader hurried into one of the apartment buildings. When we entered after him, all my hopes that the habitat had been abandoned came crashing down. Sitting in the lobby were three more bodies. Like in the pilot house, it looked as if death touched them quickly and with complete surprise. They were three men who must have been factory workers because they all wore the same bright blue coveralls. They sat around a table that was covered with multicolored tiles. My guess was they were playing some kind of game when they met their fate. One still held a tile as if ready to make a play. He never got the chance. The whole scene was creepy and I didn't want to look too closely, but I did see that
all three men had the same trace of dried green liquid on their chins. Whatever it was, it must have had something to do with the way they died.

I didn't want to be there anymore. This was getting dangerously gross. I was all set to turn and bolt back for Grallion, when we heard a crash coming from deeper in the building that sounded like breaking glass. Either it was Spader or somebody was still alive. Uncle Press took off toward the sound and as much as I wanted to run the other way, I stayed with him.

As we ran down a long corridor I tried not to think about what horrors lay behind each of the closed doors we passed. It was like running through a tomb. We finally came to a door that was open slightly.

“You ready for this?” Uncle Press asked.

“No, but we gotta do it,” I answered.

So he pushed the door open and we both entered.

We saw right away that this was an apartment very much like Spader's on Grallion. It was small and simple, with molded furniture and windows that looked out on the ocean. Nobody was here, so we had to move on into the bedroom.

That's where we found him. Spader stood in the middle of the room. At his feet was a shattered vase. That was the sound we heard. Spader must have broken it himself, probably in anger. When we entered, he didn't turn to look at us. That was because he was focused on his father. The man was sitting at a desk with his head resting on the surface. Yes, he was dead. Like the others, it looked as if he had died peacefully. He wore his full aquaneer uniform. My guess was he wanted to look as good for his son as Spader wanted to look for him. My heart went out to my friend. I had expected Spader to discover that his father had disappeared, just as mine had. But this was worse. Much worse.

I think Spader was in shock. His eyes were focused on his father as if he thought he could change the sight before him by sheer willpower.

I had no idea of what to say or do. Uncle Press walked over to the fallen aquaneer and gently closed his eyes. He then looked to Spader and said in a gentle voice, “Don't be sad, this is the way it was meant to be.”

Though he didn't know it yet, Spader was a Traveler. As I was told many times before, everything happens for a reason. I didn't quite buy it yet, but that's what I was told.

Spader looked into Uncle Press's eyes and I saw how bad he was hurting.

“This is the way it was meant to be?” he asked with a shaky voice. “I don't understand.”

“You will,” Uncle Press said gently.

“We're going to help you.”

I knew what Uncle Press meant. Pretty soon we were going to have to tell Spader about being a Traveler. But I didn't think it was going to help him understand anything. I've known about being a Traveler for some time now, and I'm still pretty clueless.

Uncle Press looked down at the dead man, and saw something. Clutched in his right hand was a small folded piece of paper. Uncle Press gently took it from his hand and read it. He then looked at Spader, and handed the note to him. When Spader took it, I thought he was going to burst out in tears. That's because the letter was for him.