“What did they say?” Jane asked, not smiling.
Frazier braced himself, knowing he had no choice but to repeat the mysterious message word for word.
“It said, ‘Mistress Jane, you are a coward. Come and find me.’”
Chapter 16
Tick slid his hand along the warm, hard glass of the big tube as he walked beside it in disbelief at the sheer height of the structure. It rose at least twenty feet above him, maybe more, and appeared to be a perfect cylinder. The bottom third was buried underneath the shifting sands of the desert. The glass was clear, but so thick he couldn’t tell what lay inside the big pipe; he could only see distorted images of varying color.
“Okay,” Paul said. “I’ve seen some strange stuff since hanging out with you two, but this might beat all.” He stepped back and spread his arms wide, looking up at the curved glass. “What could this thing possibly be?”
Sofia squatted on the ground, digging through the sand to see if the structure changed at all underneath. “Looks like it just keeps curving in a perfect circle. Maybe if we dug all the way to the bottom we’d figure something out.”
“Do I look like a shovel to you?” Paul asked.
“Well… actually, you kind of do,” Sofia said. “You look like a shovel with crooked ears.”
Tick ignored them, walking along with his hand pressed against the glass, hoping for some change or sign of what they were supposed to do next. Sweat soaked his clothes, the sun beating down on them as if trying to cook them for dinner. He could feel his skin beginning to burn-especially his neck. In all the chaos with the giant spider robot monster, he’d lost his scarf.
What is this thing? he thought as he studied the glass structure. Master George-if it really had been him-must have sent them here for a reason, and a clue or riddle must be hidden somewhere. He kept walking.
“Yo, where you going?” Paul called out.
Tick turned to look, surprised at how far he’d walked-at least a hundred feet. “I don’t know!” he yelled. “Trying to find a clue!”
He stopped, squinting to examine the endless tube as it stretched into the horizon, diminishing in a shimmering haze of heat in the distance. Nothing appeared to break the consistency of the smooth glass-no ladders, no doors, no connected buildings. He finally gave up and walked back to his friends, both of whom were digging in the sand.
“See anything?” he asked.
“No,” Sofia answered. She sat back on her heels, letting out a big sigh. “Seems like a perfect cylinder. A really big one.”
Before he could reply, a deep humming sound filled the air, a short burst lasting only a few seconds, but so loud it made the glass vibrate. Or maybe it was the other way around, Tick thought. Maybe the glass had shaken and made the sound.
Sofia and Paul jumped to their feet and moved next to Tick.
“Please tell me you guys heard that,” Paul said.
“Yeah,” Tick said, almost in a whisper. He thought he might’ve seen something from the corner of his eye-a slight movement in the glass to their left. “Something happened when it made that sound-I didn’t really get a good look.” He pointed to where he thought he’d seen the anomaly and walked closer; the others joined him.
“What do you mean?” Sofia asked.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw something move across the glass, a shadow inside or water pouring down it.”
Paul reached out and ran his hand along the curved wall. “Serious?”
“Yeah, positive.”
“Let’s wait to see if it happens again,” Sofia said.
Tick folded his arms, staring at the tube. No one said a word, silently hoping for a clue as to what they should do next.
A minute went by. Then another. Then several. A half-hour passed and nothing happened. Tick felt so uncomfortable from the sweat drenching his clothes and the sticky salt on his face
and the burning in his skin and the sand in his shoes VRRMMMMM!
The sound boomed out again for five or six seconds, and this time, they all saw it. Right where Paul had touched earlier, a section of glass slid down, as if it were simply melting open, creating a rectangular hole the size of a typical door. Inside, filling the entire cylinder, something huge and dark zoomed past like a train, going at an incredible speed. Tick couldn’t see any details, scarcely believing that whatever it was could move at such a velocity.
The train thing was gone as soon as it had come, and the glass melted upward, closing the door and reforming until not a single blemish or mark revealed it had ever been there.
“Whoa,” Paul said.
“This must be a tunnel for some kind of bullet train,” Sofia said. She gingerly reached out to where the doorway had appeared, then tapped the glass with her fingertip and pulled away. “It’s not any hotter than the rest of the tube.”
“We’re obviously supposed to go inside,” Tick said.
“And get smashed by that thing?” Paul said. “Wasn’t much room for a nice stroll in there if that train comes flying by again.”
Sofia turned toward the two of them so they stood in a small circle, facing each other. “Tick’s right. It can’t be a coincidence that we showed up here next to this big tunnel, right where a door opens up. We have to go inside.”
Paul shook his head. “Well, I’m not too keen on the idea of getting run over by a monster train. That door seems to open only every half-hour or so and it only stayed open a few seconds. Jumping in there sounds like the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“There has to be a path and a railing, right?” Tick said. “Even if it’s small. Any subway in the world has a walkway, doesn’t it? For people to make repairs and stuff?”
Paul shrugged. “Maybe, but it sure seemed to me like that thing was right next to the glass.”
“Yeah, it was,” Sofia agreed. “But what else are we going to do? Sit out here in the sun and bake to death? There’s no sign of anything for miles and miles except that stupid chair-I guess we could try sitting on it again, but-”
“We have to go in there, ” Tick interrupted, nodding toward the tube, knowing he was right.
Paul held out his hands in surrender. “All right, all right, all right. Look, here’s what we’ll do. We sit here and wait for the door to open again. When it does, we’ll peek in and see what we see-all while making sure we don’t let anything slice our heads off or smash our faces in. Ya know, just for kicks. Like I’ve said before, we wouldn’t want to mess up this pretty face of mine or you know the ladies would be devastated.”
Sofia groaned.
“That works for me,” Tick said. “If this door opens every half-hour or whatever, we don’t need to rush it. Next time, let’s just lean in real quick and take a look around. Hopefully there’ll be a walkway with a railing. If not, we’ll decide what to do from there.”
“Deal,” Paul said.
“Who’s going to poke their head in?” Sofia asked.
“All of us-it looks big enough,” Tick said. “Sofia, you look left. Paul, you look straight ahead. I’ll look to the right-and make sure you look down, too. Get in line and let’s get ready. Who knows when it’ll open next.”
They lined up in the order Tick had indicated and stood just inches from the invisible door in the shiny curved glass. The seconds dragged into minutes as Tick stared at his distorted reflection, trying to stay focused so he could lean forward the instant things changed. The sun had moved further west, but it still shone down with ruthless heat.
“What if the door closes before we pull out?” Paul said after what seemed like an hour of waiting.
Tick rolled his shoulders, surprised at how stiff his muscles were, tensed as he kept himself prepared to move. His injuries from the metaspides still stung as well. “Just count to three inside your head then pull back. It stayed open at least-”
The humming sound cut him off.
Tick tried not to blink as he stared at the unbelievable sight of the doorway opening. Like liquid silver, the glass melted and disappeared into itself, dropping in a straight line until a perfect rectangle once again revealed the inside of the tube.