“The others?” Eleanor’s mother said.
“The other Concentrators,” Luke said. “There’s gotta be more than one, right? Probably several. I don’t imagine this rogue planet would come all this way to suck power from one little hose. You said there were lots of these, uh, telluric whatevers, running around the earth?”
“Yes,” Eleanor whispered. What Luke said made sense. “Mom, do you still have the Sync?” Her mom nodded and handed it to her. The device’s cell connection might be dead, but Eleanor could still access its data, and she opened the file with the map of the world. “Look,” she said, pointing. “There are all these lines intersecting here in Alaska. But look over here.” She traced a line to Egypt. “There are just as many here.”
“And there,” Finn said, jabbing Peru.
There were several such intersections around the globe, all of them possessing a strong convergence of telluric current. But there was something else they all had in common. They were places von Albrecht had written about.
Gradually, Eleanor began to form a theory of her own. “What if aliens visited the earth tens of thousands of years ago to prepare it for their planet? All these places have something in common. Some people think they were built by aliens. Like the Great Pyramids. Well, maybe the aliens planted Concentrators at all these sites, and then they left, and now the dark world has come to harvest the energy!”
Everyone fell into silence again, listening to the purr of the plane’s engines.
“We’ll reach Barrow soon,” Luke said. “I’m going to land far outside of town, or the G.E.T. might try to shoot us down again.”
“Do you know anywhere we can hide?” Dr. Powers asked.
“Felipe?” Eleanor suggested.
Luke nodded. “You kidding? Aliens? He’ll love this.”
“Then what?” Julian asked.
“Then we jailbreak my plane,” Luke said. “Head to Fairbanks. Betty can hide us for a little while. From there . . .”
From there, Eleanor thought, we have to travel around the world to those other sites. It sounded like an overwhelming mission, an impossible task, but then, that was exactly what people would have said about Eleanor’s trip to the Arctic to search for her mom. Yet she had found her, and her mom was here, sitting in the seat next to her, alive and safe.
If there were other Concentrators, they would find them, and Eleanor knew now how to shut them down. If they succeeded in that, if the rogue world could no longer drain the earth’s energy, would it die? Or at least leave their solar system and move on?
A new vision of the future filled Eleanor’s mind, an alternative to Skinner’s dire apocalypse. A vision of an earth returned to its orbit, a world of warmth and thaw and hope.
“From there, what?” Finn asked, in response to Luke’s open question.
“From there,” Eleanor said, thinking of Amarok’s smile, “we make a new home.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE WRITING OF A BOOK IS, FOR ME, VERY MUCH A TEAM effort in which there are no unimportant contributions. To thank everyone involved never ceases to cause me anxiety for fear of forgetting someone. Nevertheless, here goes.
Thank you to Donna Bray for giving me the opportunity to go with Eleanor on this amazing journey. This book is only the beginning. Thanks also to Jordan Brown, who asked all the right questions and helped me find the right answers. From the beginning, he and I were on the same storytelling page. Also invaluable to me has been the amazing community of writers and friends here in Utah. I can’t possibly name them all, so instead I’ll give a general shout-out to Rock Canyon. I could not have written this book without the support of my wife, Jaime, who not only understands and accepts the inevitability of my procrastination but stands ready to read and talk about what I’m writing. Appreciation must also be expressed for my stepkids, Stuart, Sophie, and Charlie, whose excitement for my books gets me excited, too. Thank you to Steve, my agent and partner in this career I still sometimes can’t believe I have. Lastly, thank you to all alien beings who may have visited this planet at points in the past. I hope you’ll forgive me if I’ve mischaracterized your intent in this book, or failed to give you proper credit for the monolithic structures you helped to build.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo by Nami Leu Photography
MATTHEW J. KIRBY is the author of the acclaimed middle grade novels The Clockwork Three, Icefall, and The Lost Kingdom, as well as one book in the New York Times bestselling series Infinity Ring. He was born in Utah, but with a father in the military he has lived in many places, including Rhode Island, Maryland, California (twice), and Hawaii. As an undergraduate at Utah State University, he majored in history. He then went on to earn MS and EdS degrees in school psychology. Matthew currently lives in Utah. You can visit him online at www.matthewjkirby.com.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2015 by Paul Sullivan
Cover design by Katie C. Fitch
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE ARCTIC CODE. Copyright © 2015 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kirby, Matthew J., date, author.
The Arctic code / Matthew J. Kirby. — First edition.
pages cm. — (Dark gravity sequence ; book one)
Summary: The Earth is in the grip of a new Ice Age, and when twelve-year-old Eleanor’s scientist mother disappears in the Arctic, Eleanor sets off on a dangerous journey to find her—and uncovers a mystery, a crime, and evidence that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials.
ISBN 978-0-06-222487-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
EPub Edition © March 2015 ISBN 9780062224897
1. Glacial epoch—Juvenile fiction. 2. Scientists—Juvenile fiction. 3. Mothers and daughters—Juvenile fiction. 4. Adventure stories. 5. Extraterrestrial beings—Juvenile fiction. [1. Science fiction. 2. Glacial epoch—Fiction. 3. Scientists—Fiction. 4. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 5. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 6. Extraterrestrial beings—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K633528Ar 2015 2014030622
[813.6]—dc23 CIP
AC
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15 16 17 18 19 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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irby, The Arctic Code
The Arctic Code Page 21
