Dash shouted, “Get off! Get away from us!” He could hear the thick glass top creaking in its frame. The crawler’s gray-white skin pressed against it, inches from Dash’s face.
Carly jabbed at the start button. The engine caught for a second and then choked.
The crawler shoved the Streak with its whole body, full force, and the Streak tipped toward the slope and rolled over, leaving Carly and Dash upside down for a moment before it rolled again. It landed farther down the slope, upright—but the glass top had cracked and flipped off.
“Our roof!” cried Carly. “Can we get it back on?”
“I don’t think so,” said Dash. “Look at it.”
The glass top lay in the snow, broken into three pieces.
They were in the cold. They had no time to feel it, though. Carly jammed a finger on the start button. “Come on, Streak!” Dash yelled, looking out at the ice crawler oozing toward them down the bank. “Go, go, go!”
And finally, the intake pipe sucked in the last of the mashed locusts, the engine caught and roared, the ice crawler fell back, and Carly steered them sharp to the left, up through the drifts, and away.
Escape! It felt terrific for the first ten seconds, and then they understood their danger: they were out in the open now, going at high speed, exposed to the killing cold of Tundra. They could feel it deep in their bones.
“We’ll head for the cave,” said Carly through clenched teeth. “We can last ten minutes, can’t we?”
Dash didn’t answer. He didn’t know.
He twisted around in his seat and looked behind. He could still see the ice crawler, like a hill in the distance. Was it following them? They were outrunning it.
“How are your hands?” He radioed to Carly as they skimmed over the snow. His own hands were both completely numb. He couldn’t have held on to a steering wheel at all.
“Pretty much gone,” Carly said back. “I’m holding on with my arms.”
Dash knew how frostbite worked. The cold would freeze skin first, but the longer you were exposed to it, the deeper the freeze would go—down into the flesh, the blood vessels, the nerves. Small parts like toes and fingers could freeze all the way through. Mountain climbers in places not nearly this cold ended up losing toes and fingers all the time.
If it hadn’t been for TULIP, they might have turned into blocks of ice immediately. But she stood close behind the two front seats, radiating heat from her belly. A lot of that heat was swept away by the freezing wind, but even a little heat was better than none.
“We have to get there fast,” Carly said. “Into the cave, out of the wind.”
So they flew across the frozen landscape, half out of control. The distance to the cave wasn’t far, but after about five minutes, Carly took her foot off the accelerator. “I have to stop,” she said. “I can’t hold on.”
Dash saw that her whole body was shaking with shivers. “Can you move? Get out the door? We’ll trade places, I’ll drive.”
She nodded but didn’t speak.
Dash opened the door on his side and swung his boots onto the ground. On numb feet that felt like wood, he stumbled to the other side of the Streak and helped Carly out of the driver’s seat and over to the passenger seat. She slumped against the door. He strapped her in and struggled around the snowmobile again, wind howling past his helmet, pelting him with beads of ice.
In the driver’s seat, he placed his hands for a moment on TULIP’s stomach. It was a while before the heat got through his gloves and warmed his fingers enough so he could feel them. Then he turned TULIP and aimed her heat mostly at Carly. He took hold of the controls.
“Red button,” Carly mumbled. “Pedal on right side.”
He saw how it worked, and in a minute, they were speeding forward again. But he was so cold. The wind was roaring in his ears—a strange, deep, uneven roar. The part of him that was alive had dwindled down to a small spark.
“We’re weaving!” Carly shouted. “What’s wrong? Should I take over again?”
Dash tightened his grip on the steering wheel and got the Streak on a steady path.
Carly looked back, and Dash heard her take a sharp breath. “That one crawler is still following us,” she said.
“How close?” asked Dash.
Carly got out her binoculars. “I can’t tell,” she said. “Stop for just a minute.”
Dash brought the Streak to a halt.
The creature was moving. Not fast, but it was still creeping along in the same direction.
“About half a mile. It’s still on our tail,” Carly said.
Dash let up on the brakes, and the Streak leapt forward. “We’ll be safe in the cave,” he said.
He drove at top speed, and within five minutes, they’d reached the familiar slope and the mountainside where the mouth of the cave gaped. Dash steered up the slope and brought the Streak to a halt.
It took them some struggle to get TULIP out of the cargo hold; she was small, but she was heavy and her shape made it awkward to get a grip on her—especially with frozen fingers. They each took one side. “Now heave!” Dash cried, but she slipped from their padded gloves and slammed down into a snowbank on her back, squealing, paddling her short legs in the air.
“Let’s drag her,” said Carly. So they got their arms under her trapezoid head, hoisted, and hauled, carving a deep rut in the snow as they forced their way toward the cave against a wall of wind.
They stumbled inside, where they leaned against a wall, breathing hard. “We’ll rest here for a few minutes and warm up,” Dash said.
“Right.” Carly was nearly too cold to speak.
“Then we’ll go out and get the job done,” Dash said.
“Yes,” Carly murmured. She thought of that herd of creatures moving toward them. They’d have to single one out somehow, and then get close to it, and then…She closed her eyes. She’d think about it later. Right now, she was too tired.
—
About a quarter of a mile away, the mother crawler butted up against the clear, curved, crustlike things that looked like ice but weren’t. The crusts had come off the very fast animal that had carried away the two smaller animals. The tracks of this fast animal led out across the snow, making a smooth path, easy to travel on. The ice crawler, with her calf behind her, slid along it.
—
Farther to the north, Anna and Ravi were still putting distance between themselves and the monstrous ice crawler Anna had scraped with the Talon. They’d been going full speed for several minutes, shaken by their close call, but now the panic was fading.
“Hey,” said Ravi. “We did the deed!”
“We did,” said Anna, smiling. “Mission accomplished.”
“And on the first try!” Ravi added.
“And without accidents or injuries,” said Anna.
“Time to check our position,” Anna said. “We need to signal Colin to come and get us.”
Ravi looked at the GPS on his wrist tech. “Looks to me like we’re too far east,” he said.
“Then correct our course with the right coordinates,” said Anna.
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Ravi gave a jokey salute. “No rush, though, right? Don’t we have time to stop for a few seconds and check out these zero crystals? I really want to see what they look like.”
“I do too.” Anna looked around for a place to stop. They’d been riding through a narrow valley that led them gradually upward. She brought the Cheetah to a halt beside a rock formation that rose in dark spires out of the snow.
Ravi reached behind the seats for the Talon. He laid it on his lap and very carefully slid open the lid. He peered in. Anna bent over and peered in too.
“Where are they?” she said.
“I don’t know.” Ravi tilted the box from side to side. “I don’t see anything.”
“It’s possible they could be invisible to the naked eye,” said Anna, but even to herself, she didn’t sound convincing. “Hand me the box.”
Ravi did. A
nna took off one glove. “If they’re so extremely cold, I should be able to feel them,” she said. She poked around inside the box with one finger. It was cold in there, but no colder than everywhere else. She thought she’d feel something like tiny pebbles or grains of sand—but there was nothing.
“I don’t get it,” said Ravi. “You scraped that baby crawler really hard.”
“I know. But maybe not hard enough.” Her voice was grim. “We’re going to have to find another one,” she said. “We have to try again.”
“I guess we do,” Ravi said reluctantly. “Should we go back to the same one?”
“No. And not its mother either. She’s already furious at us. We’ll find a different one.”
“Where?”
Anna shrugged. “We’ll just drive until we see one. There must be more.”
Ravi put away the Talon, and Anna started the engine. They drove on up the sloping valley. Black rocks rose on either side of them, and snow drifted down in scattered flurries. After several minutes, they came to a place where the valley opened up and they could see that they had arrived at the top of the slope. Spread out below them was a wide plain of low hills, and to the east, along the shore of what looked like an immense silver lake, the snowy ground was dotted with humped dark shapes huddled together. Immense whirlwinds of snow swirled among them. The snowflakes flew in a peculiar way, sideways and upward as well as down.
Anna stopped the Cheetah. They both stared out at the view.
“Ice crawlers,” said Anna.
Ravi nodded, his eyes wide. “Hundreds of them,” he said.
“And those whirlwinds,” said Anna. “I don’t think they’re just wind.”
“No,” said Ravi. “Those flakes flying off them—they must be locusts.”
Dash and Carly had made it into the cave. Compared to the outside, the cave was warm—that is, Dash thought, it was not quite cold enough to freeze off a person’s face and send it in ice splinters crashing to the ground. They couldn’t take off their snowsuits, of course, but they were out of the wind. Some distance away, the mother crawler was heading toward them, but she was no longer a danger. She was much too big to get into the cave.
Dash was breathless, and he felt almost too weak to stand. He sat still, leaning against the cave wall, and waited, not trying to speak or move. After a few minutes, when his breathing came more easily, he stood up, hoping he looked normal, steadying himself with a hand against the wall.
“Are you okay?” Carly asked, and he said he was. “Are you sure? You don’t look too good.”
“I’m sure.” Dash stepped away from the wall. “Come on,” he said. “Help me with TULIP. We need to get warmed up.”
They set TULIP on a low ledge and huddled around her. They held out their hands to her glowing belly, but it was hard to get their whole selves warm at once. The blackness of the cave loomed around them. Dash imagined they must look like the cave dwellers of ancient times on Earth, small in the darkness, bending over one bright spot of fire.
Dash knew that there had been ice ages on Earth. Could those times return? Would the people of Earth someday be living in caves again, crouching around fires? He shivered and inched closer to TULIP. He felt the darkness of the cave darkening his thoughts. There was not one of the planets they had visited that he would have wanted to live on. Not tropical J-16 with its ravenous reptiles, not mechanical Meta Prime, not ocean-covered Aqua Gen, not stony Infinity (although he wouldn’t mind having one of those flying horses), and certainly not frozen Tundra. He felt a moment of sharp homesickness and sighed.
Carly picked up on the sound. “What was that about?”
Dash pushed away his dark thoughts. “Just wondering where the warm beaches are on this planet,” he said. “And the palm trees.”
“And the swimming pools,” said Carly, smiling. “And the hot dogs.”
The light moment felt good, but it was brief.
They were cold, and not happy. They had not yet succeeded in their mission. Anna and Ravi had the zero crystals, but they did not. And with the Streak broken, it wasn’t clear how they’d get them. It was starting to feel like Aqua Gen all over again. A broken vehicle. No way to get the element without it…
Carly sat next to TULIP, with her arms around her bent legs and her chin on her knees, thinking. Dash lay on his back with his boots against TULIP’s middle. After a while, he felt his mind begin to start warming up again. “I have an idea,” he said.
“Good,” said Carly, raising her head. “What is it?”
“We need those zero crystals,” said Dash.
“Right,” said Carly.
“And we can get them only from an ice crawler.”
“Right,” said Carly.
“But,” Dash went on, “we don’t have much in the way of transportation. We could go for maybe ten minutes in our broken snowmobile without more or less freezing to death. So really we have just one course of action.”
“I know what you’re going to say.” Carly didn’t sound happy about it. “We have an ice crawler coming right toward us. How convenient.”
“That’s right,” said Dash. “We have to get the crystals from her.”
“But she’s angry. And she’s dangerous.”
“What choice do we have? Once we get the crystals, we won’t need the Streak anymore. We can call Chris to come and get us, and we’ll be out of here.”
“So,” said Carly, “your plan is that we should walk up to the ice crawler and use the Talon on her while she tries to eat us or crush us to death.”
“No,” said Dash. “My plan is much better than that. We want that crawler to come right up to us. She’s way too big to get into the cave. But we want her to try to get in. To press some part of her huge front end against the entrance so that we just step up close, scrape her with the Talon, and get our crystals.”
“And after that, she goes away?”
“Sooner or later, yes,” said Dash.
Carly inched a little closer to TULIP and thought about this. “I see one flaw in this plan,” she said.
“Which is?”
“Why would the crawler want to get into the cave? We don’t really know if she’s interested in eating us. As far as we know, crawlers eat only locusts.”
“Exactly,” said Dash. “And that’s what we’ll offer her.”
He went to the entry of the cave. “Look,” he said, pointing outward. “There she is, coming toward us. At that rate, she’ll be here in maybe six or seven minutes. So we have to work fast.” He stepped outside, motioning for Carly to come with him, and he tromped through the snow to the Streak and reached inside—easy to do, since the top was no longer there. He bent over, as much as his bulky suit would allow him to, and when he stood up again, he had an armful of dead snow locusts.
“We’ll scoop out as many as we can,” he said, “and spread them around outside the cave and a little way inside.”
“Gotcha,” said Carly. “We’re laying bait. Let’s do it.”
From the back of the Streak, Dash took a light-weight metallic capsule that held a cable that was part of standard expedition equipment. He opened the capsule, put the cable aside, and used half of the capsule to scoop up locusts. Carly took the other half from him and used it to spread the locusts around, making a locust carpet outside the cave and partway in. They moved as fast as they could, glancing up every few seconds to see how close the ice crawler was.
The last time they looked up, she was about a hundred feet away.
“Okay,” cried Dash, “let’s get inside!”
They stood just within the cave entrance and watched the crawler approaching. She came slowly across the snowy ground and started up the slope toward the cave.
Dash took the Talon from his pack and held it up. Its two sharp points glittered in the light. “Do you want to do it? Or shall I?”
“You do it,” said Carly. “I’ll hold the light.”
The crawler came steadily toward them, its pale skin ma
king it almost invisible against the snowy ground. Dash couldn’t help wondering if it was leaving a slimy trail behind it, like a snail. It made no sound, but every now and then, it reared up and its gray underside was like a mammoth column suddenly rising from the ground. Dash could see its dark mouth opening and closing.
Thirty feet away. Twenty feet.
Dash held the Talon in a tight grip, ready to strike as soon as the crawler came up to the cave. His heart was hammering, but he felt confident. They had a good plan, and their mission here was almost over.
Then came a sound from somewhere in the distance. It was a long, desolate moo.
The crawler stopped.
The moo came again.
Carly peeked out of the cave. She scanned the vast white landscape.
“It’s the calf,” she said. It was maybe half a mile away, all by itself at the base of a hill. It was crying.
The big crawler slowed, stopped, and changed course. It made a huge U-turn and headed away from the cave. Dash saw his plan fall apart.
“We’ll go after it,” said Carly. “We have to. It’s our only chance.”
Dash nodded. “In the Streak,” he said. “We’ll freeze, but it won’t take us long. We should probably leave TULIP here so we’ll be less noticeable.”
“Good call. I think they can sense heat,” said Carly.
So they jumped in, Carly at the wheel. She revved the engine, and they took off, following the crawler, going just fast enough to catch up with her but not—they hoped—fast enough to scare her into attacking them again.
“Pull up alongside,” said Dash, “and try to get close enough so I can reach.”
For a minute, the Streak and the crawler glided over the snow side by side. The crawler’s pale side towered next to the little snowmobile like a wall.
“Closer,” said Dash. He stood up and leaned from the Streak, stretching the Talon out toward the crawler’s side.
Carly pulled in closer.
Dash leaned, reached—and miscalculated the distance. He toppled from the Streak, bumping against the crawler as he fell. The crawler’s sides bulged and rippled. It reared up, its massive bulk looming over Dash like a skyscraper.
Escape the Vortex Page 7
