He crept over. Nodded his head to himself. And peeked inside.
He saw his mom, looking pale and tired, her hair disheveled. She was still there. It hadn’t worked.
His shoulders slumped and he turned back to face Sarah and Chloe. Sarah’s eyes crinkled in sadness and sympathy, and Dexter straightened his posture and pursed his lips. He wanted to give up. But he couldn’t.
“We have to do better,” he said.
He was daunted but undeterred. His mom needed him. He knew what she would encourage him to do in this situation. It was the same thing she always told him whenever he felt like giving up: He’d just have to try harder. He could do anything that he put his mind to.
He reached into his pocket. But the time machine wasn’t there. His heart skipped a beat. He checked his other pocket and looked around to see if he had dropped it.
“Sorry, Dexy,” Chloe said. She had backed away from them and her face was clouded with an expression Dexter couldn’t place. Sadness? Sheepishness? Deviousness? Dexter saw the key glinting in one of her small hands.
Dexter couldn’t process what he was seeing. “Why do you have that?”
Then he remembered how Chloe had hugged him. She must have stolen it from his pocket while he was distracted.
“You’ll understand,” Chloe said.
Sarah Daisy ran at her. “You stupid, thieving . . .”
Chloe whispered something to the time machine, shimmered for a brief instant, and warped just before Sarah reached her.
Put these in your ears,” Mick said.
He pushed two small silver ear buds into Jacob’s hands and waited for Jacob to do as he was told. Jacob just stared at them. He had no intention of mixing earwax particles with his arch-nemesis.
“Why should I?” Jacob asked.
Mick rolled back his head and sighed loudly. “Because I have something to show you, but I can’t tell you where and when we’re going next.”
Jacob’s face flushed with anger. “Tell me or I’m not going.”
Mick closed his eyes and sighed again. He wiped his face and kicked at some leaves.
“It would be too dangerous for you to know. There are people who would do anything for this information.” Mick turned back to Jacob, his eyes hard and jaw set. He pointed his finger in Jacob’s face. “Anything.”
Jacob was taken aback. He couldn’t recall ever seeing Mick so serious before, not even after Jacob had spray-painted Mick’s spaceship. He wondered if it was really possible that people would force Jacob to tell them whatever destination Mick was guarding so closely, and the edge to Mick’s voice made Jacob believe that he was telling the truth.
But he still didn’t put in the ear buds.
“Tell me the plan,” Jacob said.
Mick stared at Jacob and blinked a few times, considering. He took out his time machine. He shook his head slowly. “No. It’s too dangerous. Either you put those in and come with me or I’ll leave you here in the forest.”
It was Jacob’s turn to blink.
“Don’t think I won’t do it,” Mick said.
Jacob realized he didn’t have much choice. Mick was the one with the time machine.
He put the ear buds in, cringing at the thought that they had once been in Mick’s ears. Mick tapped his Astral Telly and Jacob’s ears were suddenly blasted with lounge music.
“Ugh!” Jacob shouted. “What is this?”
Mick mouthed words, but Jacob couldn’t hear them.
“What?” Jacob shouted.
Mick covered his mouth with one hand, grabbed Jacob’s shoulder with his other hand, and suddenly the air rushed out of Jacob’s lungs and he was warping.
The first thing Jacob noticed when they arrived at their destination was a cold wind that bit at his cheeks. He rubbed his arms for warmth. As his vision adjusted, he also realized it was dark. They had warped into the night.
And when he finally got his bearings, Jacob could hardly believe what he was seeing. He was staring at a very large, very old spaceship.
It was tall and silver, with four fins that touched the ground and curved into a neat point at its very top, which was nearly a hundred feet in the air. The shell of the spaceship looked like rough pounded metal studded with large gray bolts. The only way inside was via a small ladder that led up into the belly of the spaceship. It looked nowhere near as futuristic as the spaceships Praiseworthy or Lucy. It wasn’t even as futuristic as the spaceship Swift, the dented old ship that had crash-landed on Numonia. It almost looked as if it had been cobbled out of sheets of aluminum and held together with nothing but some glue and a great deal of hope. It was lit by a large, orange full moon that hung low in the sky, almost as if it were keeping watch over such an unlikely, otherworldly object.
“Where are we?” Jacob asked, realizing they could have warped to another planet that had a similar moon. “Is this Earth?”
Mick looked annoyed that Jacob was still asking questions, before relenting and nodding. “Yeah. We’re on Earth.”
After he had stared at the spaceship for a while, Jacob began to look at the crowd standing around it. He was startled when Mick clapped him on the back.
“Come on,” Mick said. “Let’s move closer.”
They walked to the edge of the group, which was comprised mainly of middle-aged men and women, but there were some children among them as well. They were all dressed in long knit coats and many were wearing unique hats made of animal fur. Jacob was by no means a fashion expert, but they looked like clothes his great-grandparents wore in old photographs. They clutched old suitcases, which were covered in patterned fabric. Jacob guessed they had warped to somewhere in the middle part of the twentieth century.
Though many people were stomping their feet in the cold, there was also a palpable buzz of excitement. People were smiling, excited, chattering quickly to each other and laughing. A thin voice managed to rise above the din.
“Excuse me,” the voice said, reedy and accented. “Excuse me, friends.”
The crowd quieted, and Jacob finally caught a glimpse of where the voice came from. The man’s white hair was wild, his eyes were wrinkled and kind. He wore a tweedy bow tie, and he was clutching a wooden megaphone. Jacob was not exactly a history buff, but even he knew who it was: Albert Einstein.
“Thank you,” Einstein said when the crowd had quieted. “Thank you, friends. Zis is a momentous occasion and a very exciting one, as I don’t have to tell you.”
Jacob smiled at his halting politeness. Almost every sentence sounded like Einstein was asking a question, seeing if anyone would contradict his words.
“Zese are exciting times but also ze most difficult we have ever known. Hitler’s armies stretch across ze whole of Europe, and we have heard ze tales from loved ones of horrors and suffering. Humankind is close to developing weapons zat are greater zan anything ze world has ever seen. Ze time has come for us to leave zis planet and start a new civilization zat is peaceful and good and based on ze principles of fairness and equality. We will live with ze stars. Zey will give us a better life.”
Jacob realized what he was seeing. It was the very beginning of the Astral civilization, when the early Astrals blasted off into space and went thousands of years back in time to start a new civilization that would be ready for Earth when it was technologically advanced enough to be dangerous to them.
These were Mick Cracken’s ancestors, on Earth, ready to blast off into space. No. He shook his head, remembering again that he was part Astral. They were his ancestors too. These were the people who spread out among the stars, who went back in time and started a new way of living with spaceships and strange planets and a carefree way of life. These were his great-great-great-great-great-grandparents, standing there in the cold with hopeful smiles, ready to blast off into a universe they had never seen before but trusted wo
uld give them a better future.
“We will be Astrals,” Einstein said. “Ze stars will be our guides. Space will be our home. And we have packed plenty of corndogs aboard ze ship!”
The crowd cheered. Mick lightly punched Jacob on the shoulder and beckoned him toward a nearby hill. Jacob reluctantly followed, and from a safe distance away, they watched the new Astrals climb the ladder one by one, the kids too, cooperating as they hauled their luggage into the hull and disappeared inside. Jacob even thought he spotted a man with a crescent head, someone who looked like he might have been Moonman McGillicutty’s ancestor.
Soon they tipped over the ladder and closed the hatch, and smoke started emerging from the base of the spaceship. The smoke turned into a mighty roar of fire, and the spaceship shook and shuddered and creaked and then suddenly shot into the sky like a bullet. Jacob felt the heat on his face and craned his neck to watch it soar into space and shrink into a small orange dot, and when he couldn’t see it anymore, he turned back to look at the field, which was still singed and smoking from the flames.
The Astrals were on their way to space. And Jacob had seen it.
“Wow,” Jacob said, turning to Mick. “Thank you for showing me that.”
Jacob expected Mick to reward him with a gloating grin, but instead Mick’s expression was grim and serious. He pointed to where the spaceship had blasted off.
“Those are our ancestors. Ours. That is the moment when they blasted off into space to become Astrals.”
“Right, so thanks for—”
Mick shook his head. “You’re not listening. If someone were to stop that ship from blasting off it would mean no more Astrals and no more space colonies . . . no us. You and me, Jacob. We wouldn’t exist. Planet Royale, Planet Archimedes, that dustball of a planet I sent you to . . . None of it.”
It dawned on Jacob what Mick meant. If someone wanted to get rid of Astrals, all they had to do was go back in time and stop Father Albert and the first Astrals from going into space. If some evil person stopped those first Astrals, there wouldn’t even be such a thing as space humans. No planets, no spaceships . . . No Jacob.
Mick nodded, knowing Jacob understood, and held up his key. “If a time machine fell into the wrong hands, it could mean the end of Astrals as we know it.”
Steady . . . Steady . . .” Dexter said.
He was crouched at the edge of the forest in front of Sarah’s house holding out an orange flower, trying to tempt Nelly into eating it. Nelly’s beady eyes were definitely intrigued by the flower. He stayed a safe distance away, darted to the left, stopped and stared for a moment at Sarah and Dexter, then darted to the right.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Dexter said quietly.
In a blinding flash, Nelly sprang forward, grabbed the flower in his mouth, ran away toward the stream, leaped across it, and disappeared into the forest before Dexter could even start to pounce.
“What . . .” Dexter said. “That wasn’t fair!”
Sarah stared at her Astral Telly. Jacob wasn’t answering. Astral Tellys could reach anyone in the universe, but apparently they couldn’t find someone stuck in a different time.
She shook her head and stared at the jungle that used to be their street. “What are we going to do, Dexter?”
Dexter sat down on the ground and thought a moment. “Maybe we could set a trap with a box?”
“No,” Sarah said. “I mean, what are we going to do now? How are we going to find Jacob? What about your mom? What do we do? We’re stuck here without a time machine.”
Dexter grabbed another flower and started picking at the petals. “That’s a good point.”
Sarah sat down behind him and leaned her back against his. Even though she was still mad at Jacob Wonderbar for running off, she was starting to grow worried that he hadn’t returned. She felt a pit in her stomach when she thought about the fact that she had no idea whatsoever where or when he was in time. He might even need her to rescue him, but she didn’t have a time machine to try and find him.
When she thought about the missing time machine, she felt an electric rush of anger at The Brat for trying to destroy her life yet again. She was always, always up to no good. Sarah did not know what she had done in a past life to have deserved growing up with the worst kid sister the universe had ever known, but it must have been extremely severe. There were not enough words in the dictionary for Sarah to describe the depth of the anger she felt. The Brat had even deprived her supposed crush Dexter of a chance to fix things with his mom.
However frustrated she may have been with Jacob, she was completely consumed with anger for her sister. What did she even need the time machine for? What did she think she was doing? It didn’t make any sense.
“So . . .” Dexter said. “What should we do? Do you think I could eat dinner at your house?”
“Of course,” Sarah said. “But first we should—”
Sarah heard a rustling in the forest down the street. She craned her neck. She realized it was a person. A girl, she corrected. She thought it was her sister and she was ready to pounce, but then her heart sank.
Former princess and current vice president of the universe, Catalina Penelope Cassandra Crackenarium, the twelve-year-old version, walked out of the forest and squealed when she saw Sarah and Dexter. “There you are!”
She ran over and stood in front of them and jumped up and down a few times.
Sarah didn’t get up. She thought she might be sick. “Of course it’s you,” she managed to say.
“What did I miss?” Catalina asked, clapping her hands.
Jacob and Mick stood in the dim light. The last embers from the rocket had been extinguished and the orange moon cast a faint glow onto the hill and surrounding field. The wind picked up and Jacob shivered against the cold.
“Who are they?” Jacob asked.
Mick gave Jacob a grave stare and Jacob shivered again, unsure whether he was reacting to the wind or the seriousness of Mick’s demeanor. Jacob thought back to their time in Napoleon’s France: Dexter’s stories about the strange secret society, the old book he found about exterminating space humans, the anxious shouts and gunfire outside the basement, and the angry, twisted face he saw through the doorway before they warped to safety.
“What are we up against?” Jacob asked.
The idea of strange and dangerous anti-Astrals made him nervous, but he had to know what they were facing. If Mick was right, there were people out there who hated Astrals so much, they didn’t even want Jacob to exist in the first place.
Mick slowly raised his hand, clutching the time machine. “Tower of London, Earth, November fourth, 1525, four p.m.,” he said quietly. He stared at Jacob. “Are you ready?”
Jacob grabbed on to the key.
“Warp,” Mick said.
The air rushed out of Jacob’s lungs and when he opened his eyes he found himself staring at an imposing white stone building that rose up above a carefully manicured green lawn. Two black ravens eyed Jacob and Mick and squawked angrily at them. They were in a courtyard surrounded by tall stone walls and dotted with white wooden buildings with red roofs. The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows. It was eerily quiet, and Jacob wondered if the castle was deserted.
Mick seemed to be having the same thoughts. He darted his eyes around every corner of the castle, then beckoned Jacob to follow him. Mick crouched as he ran over to one of the courtyard walls, looking back over his shoulder from time to time as if he could be struck by a stray arrow or spear at any moment. Jacob mimicked him and ran to the wall as fast as he could. He did not much feel like getting impaled by brutish medieval soldiers.
Mick took one last look around and then ducked through a small wooden door. Jacob followed him. They were in a dark passage underneath the walls. The air was dank and smelled like mildew. Mick took out his Ast
ral Telly, which he held in front of him for light. Jacob heard a small scratching sound and barely stopped himself from shouting out when a large rat ran past his feet. Mick slammed himself against the wall and held his throat in panic, his eyes as wide as saucers.
Jacob smiled at Mick’s reaction and said, “What, you’re scared of—”
“Shh,” Mick whispered angrily, grabbing Jacob’s shirt. Jacob kept his mouth shut but kept smiling.
They kept walking and eventually reached a door. Mick paused for a moment, then opened it quickly and they stepped inside a small room lit by just a few candles and a fireplace. A narrow slit in the wall overlooked the moat of the Tower of London and also happened to allow the horrendous smell of the moat to fill the room with a stench of rotting garbage and raw sewage.
“I’ve been expecting you,” a voice said from a desk.
A pale kid with matted yellow hair sat at a desk overflowing with maps and papers and . . . models of planets. Jacob looked around the room again. It looked like a typical small wood-paneled medieval room that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a museum, only the walls were covered with paintings of planets and stars and diagrams of spaceships and things that strange medieval teenagers were not supposed to have known about.
He wore a plain brown robe and a gold triangle around his neck. His eyes were coal black and fiery.
“This is Luger Smythe,” Mick said, his voice clipped and precise. “Founder of the Strangers.”
Luger smiled, revealing broken yellow teeth. “Is that what you aliens call us? I might have known.”
Mick bristled at Luger’s use of the A-word, the gravest insult someone could call an Astral. But even though Jacob suspected he could have broken Luger Smythe in half just by breathing on him the wrong way, Mick didn’t attack him. Instead he stood as rigid as a statue with his fists clenched.
Some of Luger’s papers fluttered in a foul breeze that swept in from the slit in the castle wall. Even though Luger was living in a smelly room in the Tower of London, Jacob had a feeling that Luger was an extremely important person. Very few people in medieval England probably got to live in the castle unless they were about to have their heads chopped off, and Luger clearly was not a prisoner. Jacob wondered if he was the author of On the Origin and Danger of Human Species Not Originating on Our Planet, the anti-Astral tome he had seen in Napoleon’s palace in France in 1804.
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp Page 7
