“He took a right,” I said. “The control room is to the left.”
“He’s going for the launch chamber,” shouted Spader.
“Let him go,” I begged.
Spader wasn’t listening. He bolted from the room, hot after Saint Dane.
“You okay?” I asked the aquaneer.
He nodded and waved for me to get going.
“Spader!” I shouted. “Spader, stop!”
I ran after my friend, but there was no stopping him.
Moments later we both got to the door of the launch chamber that had once held the hauler. Spader pushed on the door, but something was keeping it closed from inside. He pushed harder and the door finally gave way. Someone had put a barrel against it. We both jumped into the room in time to see Saint Dane about to make his escape.
He had transformed back into his normal self. His steely blue eyes flashed at us as we tumbled into the room. He was on a skimmer, like the underwater skimmers we used to sabotage his battle cruiser. We saw him a second before his head went under the water. His long, gray hair billowed out, like a spiderweb in the water around him. Our roles had reversed. This is how Saint Dane had seen us as we made our escape on the hauler.
Saint Dane shot us a look of such hatred that I thought my hair would ignite. Then his head sank below the surface. Spader made a move as if to dive for him, but I held him back.
“Let him go,” I begged Spader. “You’ll get another chance.”
Spader threw me aside and ran back out into the corridor. I followed, but had trouble keeping up because he was running flat out.
He got to the ladder, scrambled up into the tower, then jumped outside, onto the hull. As I was climbing up the ladder after him I kept yelling, “Stop him! Somebody stop Spader!”
Things were happening so quickly no one had time to react. Spader ran across the hull and headed right for the hauler we had arrived on. Before anyone could stop him, he cast off the line, jumped on board, and dove into the bubble.
Uncle Press and Yenza came running.
“What is he doing?” Yenza asked.
“Saint Dane, I mean Roder, escaped. He’s got a skimmer.”
Spader was already submerging in the hauler. Uncle Press watched him sink below the surface, his mind turning. He then looked to the deck, grabbed an air globe, and threw it to me. We were going after him.
“I know where he’s going,” he said.
“How? Where?” asked Yenza.
I wanted to ask the same thing, but I figured Uncle Press would tell me on the way. He grabbed his own air globe and one of the water sleds. I grabbed the other.
Yenza said, “I’ll send a team of aquaneers with you.”
“No!” commanded Uncle Press quickly. “We can handle it.” Something about the way Uncle Press snapped at Yenza made me realize where we were going. It all made sense. I should have figured it out myself. We were headed for the gate. Saint Dane was going to try and escape through the flume. It was the only option left to him. The aquaneers didn’t need to see this. It was a Traveler thing.
“Ready?” asked Uncle Press.
“Close enough,” I answered.
We both splashed down and plunged below the surface.
“You know which way?” I asked.
Uncle Press looked around and said, “There!”
I looked and saw a thin trail of bubbles left by the hauler. We both triggered our water sleds and followed the trail like breadcrumbs in the forest.
“This could take hours,” I said to Uncle Press as we shot along side by side.
“Maybe,” he answered. “Or maybe Saint Dane knows about another gate.”
I hadn’t thought of that. On Denduron there were two gates. Who’s to say Cloral had only one? But neither of us knew for certain, so all we could do was follow the trail of bubbles.
“Spader is going to be an important ally to you, Bobby,” Uncle Press said. “But he’s got to learn how to control his emotions.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said.
“Killing Saint Dane isn’t the answer,” he continued. “I wish it were that simple, but it’s not.”
“You mean… he can’t die?” I asked.
“His body can die,” Uncle Press explained. “But he would just come back in another form.”
“What is he? Some kind of… ghost?” ”Not like you’re thinking. His spirit is evil, Bobby. Killing his body won’t stop him from his quest.”
“Okay,” I said, not really understanding. “Whatwillstop his quest?”
Uncle Press didn’t answer at first. I wasn’t sure if he didn’t want to tell me, or he didn’t know. Finally he said:
“It won’t end until he thinks he’s won. That’s when he’ll fail.”
O-kay. That meant almost nothing to me. But I was used to that. The truth was, things were actually getting less confusing… sort of. When I thought back to how clueless I was the first time I hit the flume, I was amazed at how far I had come. But there was still a long way to go and much to learn. I had to accept that. So I didn’t push Uncle Press anymore. Besides, getting too much information just freaked me out.
We traveled for a long time and my arms were getting tired from holding the water sled out in front of me. I kept having to change my grip, sometimes holding on with only one hand to rest my other arm. I didn’t think it was going to be possible to keep going at this pace and hang on for the hours it would take to get back to the flume near Grallion.
And that’s when my ring started to twitch. We were nowhere near the rock shelf where we had first arrived, so that could only mean one thing: There was another gate.
The bubble trail from Spader’s hauler led us deeper. It was getting darker too. And cold. Up ahead I saw a rock formation rising up from the bottom. It looked kind of like a mesa you’d see in a Western movie, but of course it was underwater. It rose up to a flat top, with steep cliffs on either side. My glowing ring told me the gate must be hidden in this formation somewhere.
Something else made me think we were almost there. On the far side of the rock formation I saw a fat stream of air bubbles rising toward the surface. Whatever was causing this was on the other side of the formation, out of our sight. It could have been Spader’s hauler, but I didn’t know why it would be spewing so much air. Uncle Press and I directed our water sleds toward the bubbles, and as soon as we passed over the top of the formation, we had the answer.
It was Spader’s hauler all right, but Spader wasn’t in it. The hatch was open and it was now filled with water. Jets of air spewed up from inside. But that wasn’t the most dramatic part. There had been an accident. Okay, maybe accident wasn’t the right word because it looked like Spader had meant to do what he did.
It was an unbelievable sight. Jammed between the bubble of the hauler and the rock wall was a dead quig. It wasn’t as big as the others, but it looked plenty nasty just the same. Spader had no weapons to protect himself, so he rammed it with the hauler. The shark had fallen onto a ledge, with the hauler right on top of it.
“Nice shot,” said Uncle Press.
The quig’s tail twitched. Maybe it wasn’t dead after all. We kept our distance.
“So where’s the gate?” I asked.
We had to be in the right place. Not only was my ring going nuts, but the quig was a dead giveaway. I hoped that it was close because Spader didn’t have an air globe. Once he got out of the hauler, he was going to have to hold his breath. The two of us scanned the steep wall of the rock formation, but saw no opening.
Then I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was a bubble no bigger than a golfball that rose up near one section of the wall.
“There!” I announced, and drove my water sled toward it.
When we got close to the wall I saw that the whole rocky face was draped with a curtain of red sea kelp. I tried to remember the exact spot where I saw the bubble rising and started pushing the kelp aside, looking for an opening. But there was nothing behind the kelp but rock. No opening, no tunnel, no gate. The whole time I was looking, I kept glancing over at the quig that was pinned by Spader’s hauler. If that thing suddenly sprang to life, I was out of there.