The Secret of Zoom (14 page)

Christina laughed. “It's like he remembered what he wanted when he was a kid and then he invented it.” She studied the careful printing in the lower right-hand corner that read
Leo Loompski
. “I can see why my dad got impatient with him, though. This isn't exactly important scientific research.”

“Maybe old Leo got tired of serious science all the time,” Taft said. “I mean, look at this stuff—it's crazy, but it's
cool
. A hovercraft merry-go-round. A little plane . . .”

Christina walked ahead. Where were her mother's drawings? Where had her mother done her experiments?

The dust, suddenly thicker than ever, swirled at her feet, sandy particles with a soft, ashy feel. Christina coughed. She put up an arm to cover her mouth, and the flashlight's beam swung wide, illuminating not cavernous space but solid rock. The cave had ended. A pile of rubble filled it from floor to ceiling.

“Wow, a cave-in!” Taft darted forward. “Look, the ceiling came right down on top of everything, equipment and all—”

Christina suppressed a shudder. Her arm sank down.

“Oh,” said Taft, from the darkness ahead.

There was a long silence. Far in the distance, there was a
faint murmuring gurgle that might have been water passing over rock.

Taft stepped back through the ashy dust and took the flashlight from Christina's hand. He played its dimming beam over every foot of the rock slide, then handed it back, gently.

“There's no way through,” he said.

Christina did not answer. She did not want to talk about what might lie on the other side of the cave-in.

Taft seemed to understand, for he turned and began to poke around the sheet-draped equipment, lifting corners to see what was underneath. “I wonder if Leo Loompski ever built any of those inventions he drew, or if they're all just on paper?”

Christina shone the flashlight on Taft. “Let's go back now.”

“Okay,” said Taft. He let go of a sheet corner that hung above a curve of burnished metal and sneezed as the dust flew up. “Anyway, this is a bunch of old equipment. Nothing too interes—”

The sheet slipped to the floor.

Christina took in a sudden breath. Before her, gleaming in the tea-colored beam of light, was a silvery, smooth, perfect little craft.

It rested on small rubber wheels. Its body was like a polished metal watermelon, extra-large. It had two red-leather seats, one in front of the other, and a windscreen, and tail fins, and two beautifully curved wings. It was the plane in Leo Loompski's drawing, and it was just their size.

“
Wow
,” breathed Taft. “Do you suppose it can really fly?”

There were no real controls. There was a speaker phone sort of thing—a funnel on a tube—and a cap that unscrewed and seemed to lead to a fuel tank, but no throttle, no rudder pedals, no joystick.

“And no airspeed indicator,” mourned Taft. “It's not really meant to fly. It's only a model.”

Christina sat down to leaf through the drawings that Taft had let fall, found the diagram of the plane, and shone her flashlight on the instructions.

“After initial activation,” she read aloud, running her finger under the first line of print, “sustain tone until replicated.”

She glanced at Taft, but he looked as puzzled as she felt. She went to the second line. “Lights. Fundamental Frequency.” She moved her finger again. “Hold the light for me, will you?”

“It's getting dimmer,” said Taft.

Christina peered at the next two lines. “Prime Fuel Chambers: Raise to the Third. Set Internal Switches: Raise to the Fifth.”

Taft moved the flashlight so it almost touched the writing. Its fading beam illuminated the fifth line. “Hey, it says ‘Ignition'!” cried Taft. “It
does
fly! We just have to figure out how—”

His voice broke off as the feeble light in his hand diminished sharply, gave a last weak flicker, and blinked out. They were plunged into darkness.

I
T
was more than darkness, it was blindness. It was blacker than anything Christina had ever known, and it had weight that pressed on her eyeballs. She moved her hand in front of her face—she touched her nose—and saw nothing at all.

Something came down on her arm. Christina nearly screamed.

“It's just me.” Taft's hand groped for her wrist. “Get out the spare batteries and we'll switch.”

Christina felt her face flush red under cover of darkness.

“No,” said Taft. “No, no, no.
Don't
tell me you didn't bring any fresh batter—”

“I didn't bring any.” Christina tried to speak lightly, as if this were an amusing mistake. She gripped her knees with her hands to keep them still. She tried very hard not to panic.

Taft didn't sound panicked—he sounded mad. “Even I know you don't go into a dark tunnel without extra batteries for your flashlight.” He sighed deeply. “All right. We'll just have to walk out. We'll keep the wall on our left and keep touching it.”

“But there were side tunnels,
lots
of them—”

“Look, I know. But what else can we do? Stay here forever? It's not going to get any lighter.”

This was not a cheering thought.

“Anyway, the side tunnels were smaller. We'll be able to figure it out. Come
on
.” He felt for her hand and tugged.

Christina tried to get up, but her knees would not hold her. “Just—give me a minute,” she said, breathing quickly.

“What's the matter? Scared?” Taft sat down beside her.

Christina didn't want to answer. The solid darkness seemed to press on her shoulders. She had been afraid ever since she had seen the heavy rock hanging overhead, but now that there was no light at all, it was even worse. She imagined the rocks settling, giving way, crashing down on her . . .

“Listen.” Taft squatted next to her, his voice calm and steady. “The way to keep from being afraid is to think of something else. I should know—I've had lots of practice.”

Christina was at the ragged edge of terror, but Taft's matter-of-fact tone did her good. She sat on the cave floor, holding tightly to his sleeve, and shut her eyes. If she shut her eyes, she could pretend it was night in her room. She could think of something else besides the fact that they were stuck in a cave, deep underground, with no light—

It was impossible to think of anything else.

All right, then. The other way to keep from being afraid was to face what you were afraid of. Christina tipped her head back and stared into the darkness above, sweating. She
couldn't see them, but she knew the rocks were there. Let's see . . . she could think of them as strong, instead of heavy. As if they were holding everything up, instead of ready to fall. As if—

She blinked. There was a pinprick of light, directly above.

Was it her imagination? She moved a few inches to the left, and it disappeared. Back to the right, and there it was again.

“Taft. Look up.”

“What?”

“Do you see it? The light?”

Taft's clothes rustled and he grunted slightly as he got into position. He put his head next to hers. “Nope.”

“Move over a little. Here, like this.” Christina moved farther to the right to give him room.

“Holy cats,” said Taft, low and with feeling. “It's a
star
.”

“You sure?” Christina squinted.

“Look at it. There's got to be some kind of opening, high up in the roof of the cave. And in the morning there'll be sun coming in.”

Christina watched the star, mesmerized. It pulsed faintly, twinkling an immeasurable distance away.

“It's like my mother's song,” she said, almost to herself.

“What song?”

“Just this lullaby she wrote for me . . . I found it in the scrapbook.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “So, was it just for babies? Or was it for kids, too?”

“Kids, too, maybe,” said Christina, trying not to sound as surprised as she felt. It was funny how Taft could be so calm in a crisis and, in the next minute, sound like a little kid who missed his mom.

Well, maybe he did. Maybe she did, too, for that matter. In her mind, Christina held again the sheet music and looked at the notes. Quietly, shyly, she began to sing:

Little one, child of mine, safely rest tonight

Through the window, shining star touches you with light

She stopped. “It
is
kind of for babies, I guess.”

“I like it,” said Taft unexpectedly. “Is there more?”

Someday you may wander far, someday you may roam

Someday you may find yourself lost and far from home

Christina paused and swallowed hard. In a moment, she went on, her voice stronger:

Never fear, Mother's near, though just out of sight

Look above, find your star, in the darkest night.

The last line echoed in the cavern, almost as if another singer had chimed in a fraction late. As the echoes died, Christina could hear a tiny, burbling sound, like that of running water or a small stream.

“Christina,” breathed Taft, “look.”

Christina turned. A rosy glow, beautifully warm and pink, showed briefly in the dark, not far away. It faded as she watched.

“Sing it again,” said Taft urgently. “The whole thing. All the same notes.”

Christina did. And saw what Taft had seen.

“It happens when you sing ‘star' in the last line.” The curve of Taft's cheek was briefly visible in the glow that came again, then dulled. “Sing it again. Just that one note.”

Christina took a breath, sang a high G-sharp, and held it for as long as she could. The glow began, softly pink, and quickly intensified to a deep, rich color, gleaming dully through the silvery metal of the plane's body, leaking out in bright fingers from around the edges of the fuel cap. In a side pocket in the rear of the plane, a canister the size of a milk carton glowed pink, too. And then, just as she was about to run out of air, the plane itself began to hum.

 

They walked back through the length of the cave with the plane rolling between them, each pushing on a wing. The soft glow of the fuel tank through the plane's body, together with the canister in its rigid pouch, threw just enough light for each step forward, and the droning sound that came from the plane was loud enough to discourage conversation.

Christina glanced at the rolled-up drawing she had tucked in the back seat. She would take a closer look at it once they had more light, but for now she was just as glad to think without interruption. The deep hum of the plane, two octaves
lower than the note she had sung, vibrated through her fingertips as she worked out the problem in her head.

First, the plane must run on zoom.

It was too much of a coincidence that a harrier's cry, starting with a high G-sharp, should melt the pink and green streaks in Starkian rock—and that a high G-sharp should, apparently, get the fuel in the tank going, somehow.

And yet the plane
wasn't
going. It was humming—it was glowing—but they still had to push it. It was as if the plane was just getting ready to go, just barely—

“Activated!” she said aloud.

“Huh?”

The plane's drone was dying down, the glow fading.

“I think you've got to hold it,” said Taft. “Hold the note long enough so the hum starts.”

Christina took a deep breath and sang a long, sustained note, thinking hard. Her father had talked about frequencies—vibrations that were heard as sound—but she had ignored him. It had just seemed like more math that she didn't want to learn. But it had to do with music, too, clearly. And there was something nagging at the corner of her mind, if only she could remember . . .