“Told you,” he said with a laugh. “This thing has some giddyap.”
He was enjoying this way too much. He then released his grip and the sled jumped out of his hands. The vine attached to the pants snapped tight, and it was gone in an instant, dragging the pants o’ fruit after it.
Uncle Press then sat down to put on his swim fins. I put the speargun down and did the same, quickly. I wanted to be up and out of the water before any quigs realized they were on a wild-fruit chase and came back looking for meat. Uncle Press then picked up one of the clear globes and tossed it to me.
“Let’s go,” he said with a smile.
I think he was actually looking forward to this. He was crazy. I put the globe over my head and it immediately began changing into the shape of my face. I developed instant claustrophobia and had to tell myself that it was going to be okay.
It worked for Uncle Press. It’ll work for me. Either that or it will smother me and I’ll die right here in this fruit-filled underwater cavern. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It would definitely be better than getting chomped on by Jaws.
“Breathe normally,” instructed Uncle Press. “It’s easier than using a regulator from a scuba tank.”
Breathe normally. Yeah, right. We were about to dip into shark-infested waters and he wanted me to breathe normally. Maybe I should try and stop my heart from pounding out 180 beats a minute while I was at it.
“I’ll use the water sled,” he said. “It’ll be faster than swimming. When we go under, get on my back and hold on to my belt with your left hand, tight.”
“What do I do with my right hand?”
“That’s for the speargun.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m not taking that responsibility. No way.”
“Just hang on to it,” he said, trying to reassure me. “Nothing’s going to happen. But on the off chance it does, we’ll stop and you can give the gun to me. Okay?”
I guess that made sense. If the choice was between having a speargun and not having it, I’d certainly rather have it. So I reluctantly reached down and picked up the weapon. The gun was made of what looked like bright green plastic. The spear that was loaded in the gun was actually clear, like glass. But it looked pretty lethal just the same. I’m guessing it was made from the same hard material as our air-globe helmets. I felt the tip. Oh, yeah, it was sharp. I had held a speargun once before, in Florida. So I knew how to be safe with it. But to be honest, I never shot anything. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I never even liked fishing with a rod and reel, let alone a high-powered weapon. Okay, so I’m a wuss.
“Once we submerge,” Uncle Press instructed, “we have to swim under the rock ledge for about thirty yards. We won’t use the water sled until we get out from under the ledge. Then we’ve got to travel about a hundred yards along the reef to where the skimmer is anchored. Understand?”
I understood all right. I understood that I didn’t like Cloral anymore, no matter how nice and warm the water was. But I didn’t say that. Time was wasting. Uncle Press grabbed the other water sled and slipped into the pool. I jumped in too and immediately felt the belt tighten around my waist. This thing really did work automatically. I found that I didn’t have to tread water to stay afloat. The belt had compensated for my weight and kept me hovering in the water comfortably. I would have been really impressed, if I wasn’t ready to puke out of fear.
“Is that decoy really going to lure the quigs away?” I asked hopefully.
“In theory.”
“Theory! Don’t give me theory! I want guarantees!”
“The sooner we go, the sooner we’ll be safe,” he replied calmly.
“Then let’s get out of here!” I shouted.
With a wink and a quick swing of his arms, Uncle Press sank underwater. I took one last look around the cavern and spotted the mouth of the flume far overhead. I was sorely tempted to shout out”Second Earth!”so the flume would suck me up and bring me home. But I didn’t. I was here now and I had to go forward, not back. Actually, I had to go down. Underwater. With a sweep of my arms and a kick of my legs, I thrust up out of the water, then sank back down below the surface. We were on our way. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a short and painful trip.
(CONTINUED)
CLORAL
Swimming underwater is a very cool thing.
My parents taught me how to snorkel in Long Island Sound when I was a kid and Uncle Press, as I told you, took me to get my diving certification. I never liked regular old swimming much. To me, doing laps in a pool was like jogging on a treadmill. There was nothing interesting to look at. But diving below the surface was a whole other story. That was like dropping in to a different world.
Of course, I had been dropping in to a few too many different worlds lately, so I wasn’t as psyched about this dive as usual.
Once I sank below the surface, I was afraid to take a breath. I was used to breathing through a mouthpiece connected to a hose that was connected to a scuba tank. But there was no mouthpiece in this weird head-bubble thing. And there was no tank of compressed air strapped to my back either. All I had was a stupid little harmonica-looking doo-dad stuck near the back of my head that was supposed to take oxygen out of water. Suddenly the whole thing sounded pretty impossible. Even though I knew I was underwater and my head was still completely dry, I couldn’t bring myself to let go and…
“Breathe!” commanded Uncle Press.
I spun around and saw that he was floating right next to me. How weird was that? I could hear him even though we were underwater with our heads encased in clear plastic. His voice sounded kind of high and thin, like the treble knob on my stereo was cranked all the way to ten and the bass was backed off to zero, but I could hear him as plain as if, well, as if we weren’t underwater.
“Trust me, Bobby,” he said. “Look at me. I’m breathing. It works.”
I wanted to trust him. I also wanted to shoot back to the surface and breathe real air. But my lungs were starting to hurt. I didn’t have any choice. I had to breathe. I exhaled what little air I had left in my lungs, then took in a tentative breath, to discover it worked. I had no idea how, but that little harmonica gizmo was letting me breathe. It was even better than using a mouthpiece and a scuba tank because there were no hoses to deal with. And because there was no mouthpiece, I could talk. We could communicate underwater!
“That’s better,” Uncle Press said reassuringly. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “How come we can talk?”
“It’s the re-breather,” he said, tapping the silver device on the back of his globe. “It carries sound waves, too. Cool, aye?”
Cool was the word.
“Let’s go,” he ordered.
With a kick of his fins Uncle Press took off swimming. He left a trail of carbon dioxide bubbles that came from the re-breathing device as he exhaled. Now that I was getting used to breathing in the air globe, I took a quick look around to get oriented. The pool of water we had flumed into turned out to be the opening to a passageway underneath a huge overhang of rock. Uncle Press was now slowly swimming toward a ribbon of light about thirty yards away that I could tell was the end of the rock ceiling, just as he had described. Behind me I saw that the ceiling only went back a few more feet before ending at a craggy wall. This was a pretty out-of-the-way place for a gate to be hidden. But I guess that was the idea. The gates wereallhidden in remote places so ordinary people from the territories wouldn’t accidentally find them.
Uncle Press was already several yards ahead of me and I didn’t want to be left here alone, so I kicked off and started after him. The BC belt was doing a perfect job of keeping me neutrally buoyant. I kicked easily and swam perfectly level. I didn’t have to worry about banging my head on the rock ceiling above or crashing into the sand below. Excellent. If only I weren’t so worried about a quig sneaking up on us, it would have been perfect. I gripped the speargun and did a quick look right and left to make sure no bogey had wandered under the rock shelf to join us. The water was incredibly clear. I’m guessing I had about a hundred feet of visibility, which is amazing. If there were any quigs headed for us, at least we’d have a little bit of warning before we got chewed on.