Shakily, I got to my feet.
The engines were still whining desperately, but the airship had developed a spin, and the captain didn’t seem to be able to control it. We didn’t have long. I took the lead again, and we rushed along the walkway, clutching at the railing that was now nearly beneath us. Freddie brought up the rear, his walking stick ready to fend off any crabs that came too close.
Most of the lifeboats were gone, but one still hung beneath the rear of the airship, swinging wildly as the airship spun. We sprinted toward it.
From our left, a tide of silvery crabs came tripping and sliding down the walkway at us. They were like a wave ready to break over and engulf us.
Then Freddie was there. He leaped up beside us, sweeping at them with his walking stick, dancing around them, flicking them over the railings into the dark. I dragged Putty and Olivia to the lifeboat. They dropped through the hatch, and I followed. Freddie was still fighting the crabs, but they were all around him. He spun and kicked and slashed, but he couldn’t get free.
One rope popped, then another and another and another. Now they didn’t need the crabs to cut them. The weight of the gondola on the remaining ropes was too great. The fibers parted. Like a baby slipping from a torn sling, the gondola slid slowly from its cradle of ropes.
“Go!” Freddie shouted. “Get out of here!”
Crabs scuttled toward us. There was no way he could pass them.
I swung into the lifeboat, throwing the end of the rope ladder out, and slamming the hatch behind us.
“No!” Olivia screamed.
“Strap yourselves in,” I ordered.
I pushed myself into the pilot’s chair and pulled the release lever. Our lifeboat dropped from the airship. Angry pterodactyls swooped away from our falling craft. Through the viewing window above our heads, I saw the great airship gondola fall, finally free of the balloon that held it. Then, with a snap, the vast canvas wings unfurled on either side of the lifeboat and we were sailing away through the dark night air. Behind us, the gondola plummeted to the ground.
14
Slime
“No!” Olivia shrieked again.
I clenched my fists on the steering levers, feeling the wooden body of the lifeboat shudder through my palms.
Freddie was dead. We’d left him behind and now he was dead. He’d been trapped in the gondola when it had crashed thousands of feet to the ground.
My throat felt so tight I couldn’t speak or even sob. He’d sacrificed himself so that we could get away. I hadn’t trusted him. I’d thought he only cared about his dragon tomb, and now …
I was holding the steering levers too tight. The lifeboat fought against me as it tried to lower us gently to the ground, but I couldn’t make myself loosen my hold. If I did, I might just fall to bits. I was having a hard time focusing through the viewport, looking for obstacles. My eyes kept clouding.
“We have to go back.” In the dim fluorescence of the emergency lamp, Olivia had straightened in her seat. She gripped Putty’s hand so tight her knuckles turned white. Her hair was a mess, spilling and jutting from her hairpins. Her eyes looked wild.
“Back?” I said.
“Freddie might have … He might have…” Her voice trailed away. Her head dipped and she stared into her lap.
“He couldn’t,” I said, trying not to choke. “There’s no way he could have survived that drop.”
“We have to know!” Olivia said.
I didn’t have the strength to argue. I pulled on the left-hand lever, and the lifeboat slipped into a wide curve. Now that we were low enough, the light from Mars’s moons and the stars showed the vague shape of the land. I saw the outlines of hills and a steep, sharp valley, but that was all. It was impossible to make out details on the ground. I couldn’t see any sign of the fallen airship. I didn’t even know where to look.
I swooped around again, but it was hopeless.
“There’s nothing,” I said.
I should’ve gone back and helped Freddie. I should’ve gotten him free of the crabs and to the lifeboat before the gondola fell. But I hadn’t. I’d just left him. My hands started to shake, and the lifeboat shuddered.
I forced my hands to be steady and tried not to listen to Olivia crying and Putty trying to comfort her while fighting to hold back her own tears.
Putty had worshipped Freddie. Suddenly, I was furious at him. He’d made Olivia fall in love with him and Putty think of him as a hero. Then he’d gotten himself killed and left them like this. The stupid idiot! I wanted to punch him, but I couldn’t. He was lying dead in the wreckage of the airship somewhere in the Martian wilderness. I realized I was crying.
I pulled on the left lever again, dipping us down. I just wanted to get out of this horrible, suffocating lifeboat. I couldn’t see the other lifeboats in the darkness, and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to meet any of the other survivors. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.
The ground rushed toward us. I caught glimpses of strange night birds flapping clumsily from the trees, like black rags thrown in the wind. All I could see below was a mess of treetops, bushes, and sharp rises and falls that told of uneven ground beneath.
I tugged the lifeboat around to the right, sweeping across the darkened terrain. It dropped away beneath us. For a few seconds, we were soaring through the air again on wide canvas wings. Then the ground reared up in front of us. I tugged both levers back. The wings dipped, scooped air, lifted us, slowed us.
And we dropped.
“Hold on!” I said.
Something snatched at the left wing. Our lifeboat jerked around. The other wing lost its lift. The lifeboat tipped to the right and we crunched to a halt. If we hadn’t been strapped in, we would have been thrown against the wall. Blood spun dizzyingly in my head.
From the left wing came a ripping sound. Olivia screamed. The lifeboat fell.
Twigs and branches scratched across the hull. We crashed into something, shaking me in my seat. My teeth rattled, and I bit the inside of my cheek.
We thumped down, then finally the lifeboat came to a rest again, swaying.
Cautiously, I released my straps. We hadn’t reached the ground yet.
“Don’t move,” I said. “I don’t know how stable this is.” The lifeboat might fall at any moment.
I tested a step. The lifeboat rocked slightly, but it held firm.
“We need to climb out,” I whispered. “One at a time. We need to get onto a tree and make our way down.”
Olivia’s face was streaked with tears and she was shivering. Putty didn’t look much better.
“You go first, Putty,” I said. “When you’re safely out, help Livvy. I’ll come after.”
Putty levered herself from her seat and reached for the square hatch above her. The lifeboat swung in the branches. I kept my teeth clenched and held my breath.
She pushed at the hatch. It didn’t move. “It’s stuck.”
“Harder,” I said.
Putty put both hands beneath the hatch and shoved. The lifeboat rocked, but the hatch didn’t move. I took a step to help. The movement sent the lifeboat sliding forward. I froze in place. The lifeboat came to a stop.
“Try again,” I said.
Putty put her shoulder to it and, with a yell, heaved. The hatch popped open, banging back on its hinges. A shower of leaves fell around her. She shook her head free.
“I can see the stars,” Putty said. “We’re up near the canopy.”
“Can you get out?”
She pushed her head through the hatchway. A moment later, she withdrew it. “We’re up against the trunk of a tree. If we’re careful, we should be able to get at it. But the branches are pretty thin up here.”
I nodded. “Try it.”
Putty pulled herself up and disappeared through the hatch. I heard her light footsteps on the roof of the lifeboat. I met Olivia’s eyes and held them as we heard Putty reach the edge. My heart was thumping. Then Putty’s weight lifted from the lifeboat.
/> My little sister didn’t weigh much, but she was heavy enough to shift the lifeboat again. Branches scraped beneath the floor as the lifeboat juddered down another couple of feet.
“Your turn,” I told Livvy. “Putty will help you off the lifeboat, but first you’ll have to climb out yourself.”
And what would happen when Olivia, who weighed more than Putty, stepped off?
“Don’t look,” she hissed as she reached up to the hatch.
I blinked. “What?”
“Don’t look. You’ll see my undergarments.”
“Oh, good grief,” I muttered.
I heard Livvy give an unladylike grunt, then flop heavily onto the roof of the lifeboat. Branches creaked in protest. I bit my lip and held on to the back of my chair. Livvy’s dress brushed gently over the lifeboat as she crawled across the planks.
“You’ll have to stand,” I heard Putty say. “I can’t reach you there.”
The lifeboat must have slipped away from the tree trunk. I heard Olivia’s feet scrape, and felt a jolt as she jumped.
Putty shouted, “Got you!” Then the lifeboat tipped. The balance shifted and it slipped. I crossed the lifeboat in four quick steps, leaped up to grab the edges of the open hatchway, and pulled myself out.
A branch snapped. The lifeboat fell beneath me.
I was too far from the tree trunk. I just had time to see the crisscrossing branches around me before I threw myself outward, arms stretched.
My fingertips caught on bark and slipped. The branch slid away from me. Then another came up from below, whipping back from the falling lifeboat, and I grabbed hold.
I heard a sickening crunch as the lifeboat hit the ground, but I was safe. Eventually, I even opened my eyes.
* * *
We spent the night in the wreckage of the lifeboat. The fall from the treetops had splintered the planks and staved in the right side of the craft, but it still provided shelter from the dripping branches, and I was glad to have something solid between me and the noises of the wilderness night. Strange, yipping voices echoed through the bush. Something large leaped from branch to branch above us, pattering berries, leaves, and twigs on the lifeboat. From all around came the sounds of breathing and scurrying. Once, something shrieked like a baby, so loud and so close that I almost screamed, too.
The interior of the lifeboat was a mess. Bits of broken wood and scattered provisions covered what was now the floor. We did our best to clear space, but in the dark, we couldn’t really see what we were doing. Putty and Olivia huddled together in the back of the cabin, pressed against the mostly undamaged planks. I could just make out their pale faces and hands in the fading light.
I wedged myself into the pilot’s chair, even though the impact had cracked the post that rooted it in the floor and the lifeboat tilted at a horrible angle. From there, I could see through the wide strip of thickened glass that formed the lifeboat’s viewport. The glass had fractured, but it hadn’t broken. I hoped that if anything approached the lifeboat, I might see it before it was too late, but it wasn’t likely. Beneath the trees and thick undergrowth, it was as black as a cellar. There was no luminescent Martian grass to provide the steady nighttime glow I was used to, and anyway, my eyes kept drifting shut, until some sharp, sudden noise jerked me alert again.
Nobody said anything. I don’t know. Maybe we just didn’t know what to say. In the end, Olivia and Putty fell asleep. I’d meant to stay awake to keep watch, but I hadn’t slept properly for the last two nights, and it was too much. The next thing I knew, sunlight was shining through the viewport right into my eyes. I sat up and almost fell out of my chair. My head was spinning. I’d slept hanging half out of the chair.
Olivia and Putty were still asleep. They were lying close together, arms around each other. They looked peaceful. I would let them sleep for a bit longer while I worked out what to do. Anyway, I didn’t think I could deal with talking about Freddie yet. The longer they slept, the longer I could put it off. Just thinking about it made my throat hurt.
When our airship didn’t make it to Lunae City, people would notice. They would send out a rescue ship. We’d have to make sure they spotted us. In the meantime, I needed to see what supplies had survived. I swung awkwardly out of my chair.
A trail of slime twice as wide as my hand came over the broken planks, then down into the lifeboat. Whatever had left the trail had crawled around and slid all the way up to where Putty was sleeping. Then it had turned around and slid back out. I’d slept right through it. I shivered. What if it had been something dangerous? I should have made myself stay awake. I was lucky all it had done was rip open the supplies and slime them.
I pulled myself through the open hatch and peered into the morning mist. We hadn’t actually crashed in a forest. The trees that had caught our lifeboat and made it crash were a soaring spike of wood and branches that jutted high into the air above thick bushes and tall grasses. Around them, the land was as folded and rumpled as one of my blankets after a bad night’s sleep.
I couldn’t see any sign of the crashed airship or the other lifeboats. The ground was too broken up and hilly. The wreckage could be over the next ridge, or it could be miles away. I didn’t even know what direction it was in. The lifeboat had curved and turned so much as we came down that I had no idea where we’d ended up. When the rescue craft came looking for us, we’d stand a better chance of being spotted if we were near the wreckage. But anything could be out in the wilderness between us and it.
“Edward?” Livvy’s sleepy voice drifted up from the lifeboat. I squinted into the shadows. Livvy was disentangling her arms from the still-sleeping Putty. “What…?” she started, then gasped. A hand shot to her mouth. “Freddie.”
I lowered myself through the hatchway and dropped down. “He’s gone,” I said, feeling my stomach tighten at the words. “He saved us, and now he’s gone.” I wanted to just start crying, but I forced my face to stay blank. Right now, someone needed to keep us alive and get us out of here. I could cry about Freddie later.
Tears started in Livvy’s eyes. She wiped them away. “Are we…?”
“We’re safe,” I said. “Rescuers will be coming. We just have to wait for them.”
I looked over at Putty. She’d rolled onto her side when Livvy had sat up. Her head was twisted around against the hard wood. I winced. If she stayed like that much longer, she’d feel like she’d slept in a bathtub full of saucepans.
I shifted her around so her head was resting on a rolled-up blanket. She flopped loosely to the side again. That was weird. She was still breathing normally, but moving her hadn’t even changed the rhythm of her breath. She wasn’t normally this deep a sleeper. I knew she must be exhausted from the last couple of days, but still …
I laid my hand on her shoulder. “Putty?”
She didn’t respond. I shook her harder. “Putty. Wake up.”
Nothing.
“What’s wrong?” Olivia asked.
“Wake up!” I yelled. “Putty. Come on.” I tried to pull her up by her shoulder, but her head just drooped back. Her breathing didn’t change at all.
“I can’t wake her,” I said. I could hear myself starting to panic. “I can’t wake her!”
“Why not?” Olivia demanded. “What’s happened? What did you do to her?”
I lowered Putty gently to the floor again. My breath was coming in deep, sharp gulps that made my head swim.
I’d been wrong. Whatever had come in during the night hadn’t just crawled up to Putty. The sticky trail ran over her arm. There were two small holes in the sleeve of her jacket. I pulled the sleeve back, and the holes were in her skin, too, little puncture marks like thorns.
“Something got to her,” I said. “Something came in the night and got her.”
15
Lost in the Wilderness
Putty’s breath was steady and her pulse was strong, but when I pulled up her eyelids, her eyeballs had rolled back. All I could see were the whites of her eyes. He
r muscles were limp. I clenched my fists. First Freddie, now this. I couldn’t bear it.
Olivia grabbed my arm. “You have to get help.”
I stared at her. “Where?” We were hundreds of miles from anywhere.
“The airship. That’s where people will gather. There might be a doctor.” She looked directly into my eyes. “Don’t even think about arguing. Parthenia could die out here. I can look after her while you’re gone.”
“On your own?”
She raised her chin. “If I have to. I’m not going to lose my other sister.”
“Livvy, this isn’t—”
She cut me off with one hand, then picked up a bottle of water that had survived the crash, wiped it on her dress, and passed it to me. “You’ll need this.”
I gazed at her, uneasy. How was she going to survive? What if something came out of the wild? We might be able to fight it off together. On her own, she wouldn’t have a chance.
As if reading my thoughts, she picked up a broken branch. “If that thing comes back, it’ll regret it.”
I hesitated.
“You don’t have a choice, Edward,” Olivia said. “Neither of us do.”
She was right. We’d run out of choices. I tucked the bottle of water inside my jacket and pulled myself out of the lifeboat.
Under the hot sun, the mist was lifting quickly, revealing hills rolling further and further into the distance. I jumped to the leafy ground and started to hike uphill. I tried not to think of Olivia sitting alone in the wreck of the lifeboat with only Putty’s unconscious body for company.
Adventures had never felt like this in Thrilling Martian Tales.
* * *
I spotted the finger-trail of smoke on the horizon pretty quickly, but getting there was even tougher than I’d thought it would be. The land was broken into jagged ridges that looked like long knife blades as tall as houses coming up through the soil. The red rock was sharp and fragile. At one moment, it was breaking off in my hands; the next it was trying to cut them open. I sweated and cursed my way over them. To think, some people did this kind of thing for fun!
Secrets of the Dragon Tomb Page 13
