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  Tall gave me a look, like saying mean things about this contraption might prevent it from working, but Ned nodded.

  “That’s not a bad comparison,” he admitted. “I didn’t really have a lot to work with, and it’s not like there were seats and a cockpit on that thing, so this was the best I could do.”

  ‘How does it work?” Tall asked him.

  “Simple.” Ned gestured at the rack. “We lay down next to each other and all grab hold along that top bar. I’ll be in the middle where I can work the controls. I’ve connected my forcefield generator and amped up its power so it’ll create a protective bubble around us. I’ve been sucking oxygen into that container there, which we’ll use to keep us breathing properly.”

  “And the rockets?”

  He grinned again. “How else are we gonna get off this pond?”

  “So we’re strapping ourselves to this thing and shooting ourselves into space?”

  “Exactly!” He rubbed his hands together. “Help me stand it up!”

  Tall and I did, and then Ned gestured for us to step up and grab hold.

  “Wait!” I shouted, remembering something. I sprinted down the beach, found what I was looking for, and scooped it up. Then I rejoined them.

  “The rest of the food,” I explained, showing them the grilled seafood clasped in my arms. “We might need it.”

  “Good point.” Ned rummaged through his pockets and came up with a crumpled plastic bag, which turned out to be bigger than it had looked. We shoved the food into it and tied it shut, then I tied the bag to my belt.

  We took our usual order along the grid: Mary, me, Ned, and Tall. Each of us grabbed the top tightly. “Get ready,” Ned shouted, and hit a button on the frame above him. A soft hum filled my head, and a faint blue-green light sprang up all around us. “Now hold on!” He tapped another button, and the rockets below our feet roared in response.

  Then Ned hit a third button, and the ground exploded out from under us.

  I’ve been in fast cars with the tops down. I’ve been on motorboats cutting across the waves. I’ve been on motorcycles barreling down the road.

  None of those compare to this. Not a one. The ride in Tall’s car when we’d broken onto the bus seemed mellow by comparison. I thought my whole body might shake apart as we shot up into the sky, and I could feel the air whistling past as we rose like—well, like a rocket. Even with the forcefield I was warm, and the pressure on our bodies was intense. It was a challenge just to draw a breath, and the air smelled of something burning.

  Then the sky burst above us and dropped below us, and we were beyond that planet’s atmosphere. The warmth vanished, to be replaced by a mild cold like a bracing fall day. The stars were brighter and more numerous, no longer hidden by the atmosphere. We’d done it!

  “Way to go, Ned!” I shouted. I wanted to slap him on the back but he shook his head as I started to loosen one hand from its deathgrip, so I decided to pass on the manly signs of affection and respect for now.

  “Thanks!”

  The rockets had cut out once we’d left the atmosphere behind—no air for ignition, even I knew that much—but we were still moving from sheer inertia. We drifted for several minutes, just enjoying being free of the Deathcage Waterworld at last. Then I cleared my throat.

  “So, uh, what now?” I asked. “We’re off that planet, sure, but we’re floating through space on a glorified closet rack, and we can’t control where we going. Plus the air and the forcefield each have, what, a few hours left? A day? At most?” Ned nodded. “So now what?”

  Turned out none of us had an answer.

  Also turned out we didn’t need one.

  Someone else took care of that for us.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Interdict Humperdink

  It’s interesting. I didn’t think you could hear anything in space.

  I mean, every science fiction movie I’ve ever seen—well, not counting the really crappy ones that only run on network television late at night or on pay cable channels REALLY late at night—has said that. You can’t hear in space. There’s no air, nothing to carry sound, so you can’t hear. You always see all these shots of astronauts and space cowboys and star travelers banging on the window of some spaceship or space station and mouthing something because the people inside can’t hear them, and of playing Charades with each other because they can’t hear each other either. Then there are those shots of people resting their spacesuit helmets against each other so the sound will carry, in that sort of I’m-in-a-fishbowl-you’re-in-the-next-fishbowl-over sort of way.

  So. No sound in space.

  Which is why I don’t understand how I heard the sirens.

  But I definitely did. And they were loud, too. Not much point in a quiet siren, really. I could just see that—probably in Britain, where they’re always so darned polite. “Weo, weo, weo. Excuse me, sir, would you mind terribly lowering that chainsaw and ending your reign of crazed destruction? And, please, no more of those wild screams of rage? Oh, good. Thanks ever so much.”

  Yeah, whoever had these sirens blaring, they weren’t British.

  “Ow! Mother—” I would’ve clapped my hands to my ears if 1. I hadn’t been busy holding onto the interstellar closet rack for dear life, and 2. I’d still had ears. As it was, I wished somebody would hurry up and answer my head so it’d stop ringing.

  “Is that a cop?” Tall shouted to be heard over the din. “Are we being pulled over?”

  Mary and Ned didn’t get a chance to answer. Somebody else did.

  “This is the Galactic Authority Border Patrol, Ship Designation X-3 Niner Blue-Six Alpha,” a voice declared. It was, if anything, even louder than the sirens—I guess it had to be, since they were still going and I could hear the announcer clearly anyway. “You have violated a Galactic Interdict. Prepare to be hauled in for questioning, sentencing, and punishment.”

  “Oh, goody,” I muttered. “More punishment. I wonder which color I’ll lose this time. Maybe brown—I’ve never much liked brown.” Then my brain registered the rest of what it had said. “Hauled in? Yes, please!”

  I craned my neck, trying to see a ship anywhere, but all I could see was us, our rack, the planet we’d just fled, and the stars all around.

  “Where are they?” I demanded. “This isn’t gonna be one of those ‘we leave you sitting to make you sweat’ sort of things, is it? Because we don’t really have time for that!”

  “No, the Galactic Authority prides itself on its prompt handling,” Mary replied. “I am sure they will transfer us to their ship very quickly.”

  “Yeah, but—” I peered about again. “What ship?”

  Then there was shimmer to our left, and suddenly an entire swathe of stars blanked out, replaced by something black, bulky, and very, very BIG.

  “That ship,” Ned offered.

  I was gonna say something clever in reply—I don’t know what but it would’ve been really clever, I’m sure of it—when my vision went all blue and hazy. I shook my head and everything cleared, but since I found myself in some kind of holding cell I wasn’t sure that was an improvement.

  It was definitely a holding cell, too. I get the feeling they look the same throughout the universe. Plain grey walls, plain grey floor, plain grey ceiling, plain wooden benches mounted on three of the walls, a plain metal toilet and sink mounted in one corner, and bars across the fourth wall. Okay, sure, the bars were some kind of crackling green energy, and the lighting was seeping from the edge where the walls met the ceiling, like there was a huge light right behind each wall and we were only getting whatever slipped through to us, and the floor was bouncy like rubber even though it looked like concrete, but it was still the same. I’d been in a few holding cells before—back in college, and again right after my incident, when I was still adjusting and indulged myself in a few “violent antisocial outbursts,” and this could have been any of them.

  Minus the crazy outer space tech, that is.

  “Okay, so we go
t picked up crossing the border,” I said. I found myself a seat on one of the benches—there wasn’t anybody else in the cell with us, so I had my pick. “Now what? They haul us in, we tell ’em what we’re doing and why, Mary flashes a badge, and they give us an armed escort to the matrix, right? Right?”

  “It’s not that easy,” Ned answered. He dropped onto one of the other benches, and Mary took the third. Tall was pacing back and forth, which didn’t surprise me—I’ve seen a few lawmen get on the wrong side of a law before, and they’re always the worst about being locked up.

  “Why not? We are on official business, right?” The fact that Mary hadn’t answered yet was making me pretty nervous. “Mary? Right?”

  “Matters are more complicated than that,” she finally replied. “Our mission is of dire importance to the universe as a whole. We must reach the quantum fluctuation matrix and realign it before the invasion is complete.”

  “Yeah, you told me all that when you signed me up for this crazy escapade. But are we official or not?”

  “The Grays do not answer to most galactic authorities,” Mary said slowly. “They have an awareness that transcends most other races, and have placed themselves to shield this reality from threats its other residents may not understand or even register.”

  “So you’re saying nobody else knows about this threat?” Tall asked her. Sharply.

  Mary hesitated, then nodded. “That is correct.”

  “And the Grays are working on their own, without cooperating with other galactic authorities?”

  “Also correct.”

  “So we can’t expect anything from these guys except to be treated like the criminals we are?” Man, I thought Tall’s head was gonna explode, with his face that red. Either that or he was gonna pick up the closet rack—it had been teleported in here with us—and beat Mary to death with it. This is what happens when lawmen discover they’re actually operating outside the law. It ain’t pretty.”

  “Hey, we’re not criminals,” Ned objected. “We’re just doing something they don’t understand to stop a threat they don’t realize exists.”

  “But we did violate that Interdict,” Tall countered. “We broke the law.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “An accident?” Tall was sneering now. “Oh, sure, that’ll satisfy them—‘I’m sorry, officers, we only broke the law by accident. We tripped and wound up on that little planet no one’s ever supposed to touch. Oh, and we killed one of the natives and confiscated its weapons while we were there. That’s not a problem, though, is it?’”

  Man, I think I liked Tall better before he discovered sarcasm.

  “What, what about the whole invasion thing?” I asked, both because I really wanted to know and to stop Ned and Tall from hurling themselves at each other in some kind of weird cage match. Tall had the edge in size and strength but Ned was sturdy and probably fought dirty. “They’re aware of that, right? So won’t that lend some weight to our story?”

  But Mary shook her head. “The invasion is occurring on a quantum level,” she explained. “Few beings are even equipped to register such planes of reality, let alone note the discrepancies already occurring. The Galactic Authority remains unaware of the danger, and if we succeed they will never know the peril they and the rest of the universe faced.”

  “Great, we get to be unsung heroes.” I studied the bars. “Unless of course we get locked away for the rest of our lives first.’

  Tall was seriously pissed. “You should have told us all this when you first contacted us!” he raged at Mary. He marched across the cell and towered over her, glaring. “You should have told us this was unsanctioned!”

  “Would you have refused your aid then?” she demanded back, rising from her seat to confront him. “We had no time to waste! Every hour the matrix remains breached allows the invaders a greater foothold in this reality!” I hadn’t seen her angry before. It was glorious. And Tall backed down, too.

  “No, of course not,” he claimed, backing up a few steps and raising his hands in surrender. I don’t blame him—the heat Mary was throwing off could’ve melted an icecap. “But we could have been more circumspect, sent representatives to the authorities to request their cooperation, handled things a little differently . . .”

  “How much of what’s happened so far was handled the way you would’ve wanted, anyway?” I asked. “Seems to me we’ve been flying by the seat of our pants this whole time regardless.”

  “I don’t know.” Tall turned away and banged a fist on the nearest wall, then shook his hand. I could’ve told him not to try that. They’re used to people trying to break out of holding cells, and I’m sure these guys get customers a whole lot bigger, stronger, and meaner than he is. “I just—I’m a federal agent! I’m supposed to be the one upholding the law, not the one breaking it!”

  Really? Which agency do you work for, then, because that doesn’t sound like any of the ones I’ve heard of, I really wanted to ask. But I didn’t. No point deliberately antagonizing him.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Ned assured us. “We’ll explain how we got there and maybe we can at least get a reduced sentence.”

  Great. Maybe they’d only take half a color this time. Or a shade. Like Burnt Umber. I’ve never understood why that was a crayon color. What little kid sits there coloring some picture of Barney or Kermit and says, “would someone pass me the Burnt Umber, please?”

  We were all sitting there looking glum when we heard a door open somewhere nearby. A big heavy door, by the sound of it. At least there was a lot of whooshing and clanking. Then a shadow slid into view on the other side of the bars. It was growing longer and longer, and finally came to a stop in front of our cell, covering the entire section of floor in darkness. I was waiting for whoever cast that shadow, but the footsteps had stopped. Were they standing just on the other side, out of view? Was this some kind of weird intimidation tactic? “Ooh, look, you can see my shadow but you can’t see me?” If so, it wasn’t working. I was curious, not frightened.

  “You will follow me,” a voice whispered. The bars glowed brighter, then vanished, leaving an afterimage. And in the empty space where they’d been, that shadow rose up and filled the gap. A trio of little purple lights winked out from it. Like eyes.

  Okay, now I was frightened.

  “Do as it says,” Ned urged the rest of us quietly, hopping up from his bench. “Ungoli shadowmen aren’t known for their patience.”

  Like I was gonna refuse a walking, talking shadow-creature. Right. We all filed out after it. I heard something scrape behind us and glanced back, then wished I hadn’t. A . . . tendril of shadow had crept around us and scooped up the rack-ship like it was a Tinker Toy, and was carrying it along in our wake.

  The shadow didn’t make any sound—it didn’t have feet or anything, so no footsteps—so the only sound as we walked were our own feet and our breathing. And the whoosh of each door we passed through. There were a lot of them. This ship was as big as it had seemed from the outside, and I’m guessing we were in its bowels. Twice we were herded into small rooms that turned out to be elevators, so it seemed wherever we were going was on a higher level. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  Finally the shadow ushered us into a big room. Big may not really cover it. Auditorium-sized would be more accurate. The corners were completely covered in shadow, and I wasn’t sure at first if those were more of our captors or just because the light didn’t reach that far. Then I spotted a few pinpricks of light in one corner and shivered. That answered that.

  The floor of this room wasn’t concrete or gray. It looked like hardwood, only in a variety of colors, and it was done in an elaborate pattern. At the center was a seal of some sort—I’ve been in too many courthouses and to too many ball games not to realize that right off. I didn’t need Ned’s whisper to figure out that it was the symbol of the Galactic Authority.

  On the far side of that seal was a raised platform that hovered a foot or two off
the ground. And standing on that was—

  Silly string.

  It looked like silly string. Like someone had taken several cans of the stuff and sprayed somebody with it, then pulled the person out without disturbing the mess and left it there on its own. It was like a stick figure but swirled rather than straight, and in Technicolor. And I knew it was alive because it turned toward us as we were brought to a stop right on that seal. It had no eyes that I could see—no features at all, and no flesh except the day-glo surface of those strings—but I could feel it glaring at us.

  And then it spoke.

  “You have violated Galactic Interdict five-seven-three-nine-four-six-Q-B-twelve-seven-Alpha,” it intoned. The voice was the same one we’d heard back on the closet rack. “This is a serious crime, subject to the strictest of punishments.” It leaned forward. “State your names for the record.”

  “Ned.”

  “MR3971XJKA.”

  “DuckBob Spinowitz.”

  “Roger Henry David Thomas.”

  Judge Silly-string stared at us some more. “You four were recently found guilty of Traffic Violation E37945FQRT177913-X,” it announced. Wow, these guys have a good intranet!

  “Yes, sir,” Ned admitted for us. “We pled guilty and received our punishment accordingly.” It was funny how he seemed to always take point when talking to the authorities, but I guess even though Mary was the one in charge of the job Ned was the only full alien among us so in a way he had a better connection to these guys and a better understanding of how things worked. Or maybe it was just that everybody respected plumbers. Given how much they charge per hour, you kinda have to.

  “So I see.” The string-thing paused. “Two crimes within the space of three galactic days. But thirty-three million, seven hundred and eighteen thousand, five hundred and forty-seven-point-six-five light-years apart. Explain.”

  “We have an urgent mission to complete in the core,” Ned answered. “We disabled the train by accident while trying to avoid attack from the Dinotropic Aesthetic Elite, and after leaving the train we found other transportation to our destination. But there was a problem and we found ourselves flung onto the planet, with no ship and no way back off.”