by Dom Testa
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For Monica
Acknowledgments
As always, thanks to the cool folks at Tor who are taking this voyage with me: Kathleen Doherty, Tom Doherty, Susan Chang, and countless others behind the scenes.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Judith Briles and Jacques de Spoelbergh for getting Galahad out of Colorado and onto the big stage.
Also thanks to the many schools around the country who have climbed aboard the Galahad mission, and taken the adventure—and their students—to a new level.
I’m especially grateful to my son, Dominic III, for his continuous help, his visionary ideas and writing, and his diligence in making this book series accessible to so many. No father could be more proud.
And last, but certainly not least, thanks to everyone, both young and old, who believe in the books and their message. Smart is indeed cool. Spread the word.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Sneak Peek - The Galahad Legacy
Tor Teen Reader’s Guide
About the Author
Tor Teen Books by Dom Testa
Copyright
The universe doesn’t play fair. It supposedly has all of these rules which we’re expected to obediently follow, and yet when you turn your head the universe sneaks in a few new rules that completely contradict the first set. It’s like playing a game with a four-year-old.
For instance, the universe has one set of rules for very big things, like stars and planets and galaxies and government waste, and then another set of rules for very little things, like subatomic particles and boy-band talent.
But don’t get too comfortable with either set, because the universe reserves the right to mix them up and make exceptions whenever it feels like it, and it doesn’t even have to tell you. Take wormholes, for instance …
Actually, before we get to the wormholes, let’s cover some basic territory. There’s a chance you have randomly picked up this particular volume and you’re wondering what you’ve stumbled into. Don’t feel bad, those of us on the ship often have that same feeling.
The ship, by the way, is called Galahad, and it’s only the most spectacular spacecraft ever built by human hands. To truly understand the story of what it is, and where it’s going, and who’s on board, you should probably stop now, go dig up the first volume—titled The Comet’s Curse—and start from the beginning. That’s followed by The Web of Titan, The Cassini Code, and The Dark Zone. They’re each a rollicking, riveting tale of mystery and adventure, if I do say so myself.
If you’re stubborn and insist on diving in right here, let me do my best to catch you up.
Deadly particles in the tail of the comet Bhaktul contaminated Earth’s atmosphere, delivering a death sentence that threatened to wipe out the human species. But when it was determined that kids were immune until about the age of eighteen, a plan was hatched to select a few hundred of the world’s best and brightest teenagers and launch them towards the star system known as Eos, where two Earthlike planets would await them. Galahad became their lifeboat to the stars.
Our brave pioneers had barely pulled out of the cosmic driveway when trouble raised its head in the form of a sinister stowaway, someone determined to destroy the ship. Oh, but wait; after that crisis, more trouble popped up during their rendezvous with a research station near Saturn. It was here that the crew of Galahad encountered an alien life-form known as the Cassini, beings of almost pure thought that could either help the teens, or destroy them.
Following that little conflict came a terrifying trip through a minefield of debris in the outer ring of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt. It was during this death-defying dash through the boulder-strewn obstacle course that tempers flared and sides were drawn. Some crew members wanted to turn back, some opted to press onward. Let’s just say it got very, very ugly.
When we last left our merry star travelers, they had just confronted another alien species, a creepy collection of creatures that were labeled “vultures,” and were responsible for Galahad’s first death. The vultures came and went through some of the most bizarre features in the universe: wormholes. These act like cosmic secret passageways and have a nasty habit of opening and closing when you least expect them to. In fact, the ship’s Council Leader, Triana Martell, just recently disappeared through a wormhole which immediately folded up and vanished.
The remaining Council members—Gap Lee, Lita Marques, Channy Oakland, and Bon Hartsfield—must now carry on without their vaunted leader, who may—or may not—return. Their relationships are about to get tested to the max. Plus, don’t be surprised if some old friends from earlier adventures resurface.
I’ll be along for the ride, too. My name is Roc, and I wear a variety of hats on the ship. Yes, I’m the computer brain that is responsible for the lights and the heat and the gravity and lots of other boring, mundane tasks. But I happen to believe that my greatest duty—my calling, if you will—is in the role of advisor, therapist, confidant, and aquatics instructor.
That puts me in the front row for the greatest adventure of all time. You’re invited to join us, too. Just find a way to balance on the edge of a seat, and remember our little talk about wormholes and rules. I think you’ll discover that rules change for people, too, depending upon what suits them at the time.
I might be a complex machine, but you humans are just plain complicated.
1
It was actual paper, something that was a rarity on the ship. It measured, in inches, approximately six by nine, but had been folded twice into a compact rectangle. One word—the name Gap—was scrawled along the outside of the paper, in a distinctive style that could have come from only one person aboard Galahad. The loop on the final letter was not entirely closed, which made it more than an r but just short of a p; a casual reader would assume that the writer was in a hurry.
Gap Lee knew that it was simply the way Triana Martell wrote. It wasn’t so much impatience on her part, but a conservation of energy. Her version of the letter b suffered the same fate, giving the impression of an extended h. It took some getting used to, but eventually Gap was able to read the scribbles without stumbling too much.
And, because he had scoured this particular note at least twenty times, it was now practically memorized anyway.
He looked at it again, this time under the tight beam of the desk lamp. It was just after midnight, and the rest of the room was dark. His roommate, Daniil, lay motionless
in his bed across the room, a very faint snore seeping out from beneath the pillow that covered his head. With a full crew meeting only eight hours away, and having chalked up perhaps a total of six hours of sleep over the past two days, Gap knew that he should be tucked into his own bed. Yet while his eyelids felt heavy, his brain would not shut down.
He exhaled a long, slow breath. How just like Triana to forego sending an e-mail and instead scratch out her explanation to Gap by hand. She journaled, like many of the crew members on Galahad, but was the only one who did so the old-fashioned way, in a notebook rather than on her workpad. This particular note had been ripped from the binding of a notebook, its rough edges adding a touch that Gap could only describe as personal.
He found that he appreciated the intimate feel, while he detested the message itself. The opening line alone was enough to cause him angst.
Gap, I know that my decision will likely anger you and the other Council members, but in my opinion there was no time for debate, especially one that would more than likely end in a stalemate.
Of course he was angry. Triana had made one of her “executive decisions” again, a snap judgment that might have proved fatal. The rest of the ship’s ruling body, the Council, had expressed a variety of emotions, ranging from disbelief to despair; if they were angry, it wasn’t bubbling to the surface yet.
Now, sitting in the dark and staring at the note, Gap pushed aside his personal feelings—feelings that were mostly confused anyway—and tried to focus on the upcoming meeting. More than two hundred crew members were going to be on edge, alarmed that the ship’s Council Leader had plunged into a wormhole, nervous that there was little to no information about whether she could even survive the experience. They were desperate for direction; it would be his job to calm them, assure them, and deliver answers.
It was simply a matter of coming up with those answers in the next few hours.
He stood and stretched, casting a quick glance at Daniil, who mumbled something in his sleep and turned to face the wall. Gap leaned over his desk and moved Triana’s note into the small circle of light. His eyes darted through the message one more time, then folded it back into its original shape. He snapped off the light and stumbled to his bed. Draping one arm over his eyes, he tried to block everything from his mind and settle into a relaxed state. Sleep was the most important thing at the moment, and he was sure that he was the only Council member still awake at this time of the night.
* * *
He wasn’t. Lita Marques had every intention of being asleep by ten, and had planned on an early morning workout in the gym before breakfast and the crew meeting. But now it was past midnight, and she found herself walking into Galahad’s clinic, usually referred to by the crew as Sick House. It was under her supervision, a role that came naturally to the daughter of a physician.
Walking in the door she was greeted with surprise by Mathias, an assistant who tonight manned the late shift.
“What are you doing here?” he said, quickly dragging his feet off his desk and sitting upright.
“No, please, put your feet back up,” Lita said with a smile. “You know we’re very informal here, especially in the dead of night.” She walked over to her own desk and plopped down. “And to answer your question … I don’t know. Couldn’t sleep, so I decided to maybe work for a bit.”
Mathias squinted at her. “You doing okay with everything? I mean … with Alexa … and Tree. I mean…”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking, though.” She moved a couple of things around on her desk. “It’s just … you know, we’ll get through it all just fine.”
A moment of awkward silence fell between them. Lita continued to shuffle things in front of her, then realized how foolish it looked. She chanced a quick glance towards Mathias and caught his concerned look. “Really,” she said.
And then she broke down. Seeming to come from nowhere, a sob burst from her, and she covered her face with her hands. A minute later she felt a presence, and lowered her hands to find Mathias kneeling beside her.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “What can I do?”
“There’s nothing you can do. But thank you.” Suddenly embarrassed, she funneled all of her energy into looking composed and under control. “Really, it’s probably just a lack of sleep, and … well, you know.”
Mathias shook his head. “I don’t want to speak out of place, but you don’t have to act tough in front of me. We’re talking about losing your two best friends within a matter of days. There’s no doubt that you need some sleep, but it’s more than that. And that’s okay, Lita.”
She nodded and put a worried smile on her face. “You know what? Sometimes I wish I wasn’t on the Council; I think sometimes we’re too concerned with being a good example, and we forget to be ourselves.”
“Well, you can always be yourself around me,” he said, moving from her side and dropping into the chair facing her desk. He picked up a glass cube on her desk, the one filled with sand and tiny pebbles taken from the beach near Lita’s home in Veracruz, Mexico. She found that not only did it bring her comfort, it attracted almost everyone who sat at her desk.
Mathias twisted the cube to one side, watching the sand tumble, forming multicolored layers of sediment. “So, I’ll be curious to see what Gap says at this meeting,” he said, never taking his eyes off the cube. He left the comment floating between them.
“I don’t envy Gap right now,” Lita said cautiously. “We’ve been through so much in this first year, but especially in the last two weeks.” She paused and stared at her assistant. “I know everyone’s curious about what he intends to do, but there’s not much I can say right now.”
Mathias shrugged and placed the glass cube back on her desk. “I guess a few of us just wondered if he was going to become the new Council Leader.”
“He’s temporarily in charge. But we don’t know for sure what’s happened to Triana. She’s still the Council Leader.”
“Well, yeah, of course,” Mathias said. “But…” He looked up at her. “I mean, she disappeared into a wormhole. Could she even survive that?”
Lita’s first instinct was irritation; Triana had been gone for forty-eight hours, and Mathias seemed to have written her off. And, if so, chances were that he wasn’t alone. It was likely, in fact, that when the auditorium filled up in the morning, many of the crew members would be under the assumption that Galahad’s leader was dead. It would have been unthinkable only days ago, but …
But they had stood in silence to pay their final respects to Alexa just hours before Triana’s flight. Now anything seemed possible.
The realization cooled Lita’s temper. It wasn’t Mathias’s fault; he was merely acting upon a natural human emotion. Lita’s defense of Triana stemmed from an entirely different, but no less powerful, emotion: loyalty to a friend.
When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. “This crew has learned pretty quickly that when we jump to conclusions, we’re usually wrong. I’m sure Gap will do a good job of explaining things so we know what’s going on and what we can look forward to. Let’s just wait until the meeting before we assume too much.”
Mathias gave a halfhearted nod. “Yeah. Okay.” Slowly, a sheepish look crossed his face. “And I’m sorry. Triana’s your friend; I shouldn’t be saying this stuff. I’m just…”
“It’s all right,” Lita said. “We’re all shaken up. Now let me do a little work so I can wear myself out enough to sleep.”
* * *
Once the clock in her room clicked over to midnight, Channy Oakland climbed out of bed, threw on a pair of shorts and a vivid red T-shirt, woke up the cat, Iris, who was contorted into a ball on her desk chair, and trudged to the lift at the end of the hall. Two minutes later, carrying Iris over her shoulder like a baby, she peered through the murky light of Dome 1. There was no movement.
Two massive domes topped the starship, housing the Farms and providing a daily bounty which fed the hungry crew of teenagers. Clear p
anels, set among a criss-crossing grid of beams, allowed a spectacular view of the cosmos to shine in and quickly became a favorite spot for crew quiet time.
It was especially quiet at this late hour. Channy could see a couple of farm workers milling about in the distance, but for the most part Dome 1 was deserted. She took her usual route down a well-trodden path, and deposited Iris near a dense patch of corn stalks. “See you in twenty minutes,” she said in a hushed tone to the cat, then, on a whim, retreated towards the main entrance. She turned off the path and made for the Farms’ offices.
Her instinct had been right on. Lights burned in Bon’s office. She leaned against the door frame and glanced at the tall boy who stood behind the desk. “Something told me I’d find you here,” she said.
Bon Hartsfield glanced up only briefly before turning back to a glowing workpad. “Not unusual for me to be here, day or night,” he said. “You know that. The question is, what are you doing up here this late. Wait, let me guess: cat duty.”
“Couldn’t sleep. Figured I might as well let Iris stretch her legs.”
Bon grunted a reply, but seemed bored by the exchange. Channy took a couple of steps into the office, her hands in her back pockets. “How are you doing?”
He looked up at her, but this time his gaze lingered. “Wanna be more specific?”
She shrugged, then took two more steps towards his desk. “Oh, you know; Alexa, Triana … everything.”
He looked back down at his workpad. His shaggy blond hair draped over his face. “I’m doing fine. Sorry, but I have to check out a water recycling pump.” He walked around his desk towards the door.
“Mind if I walk along with you?” Channy said. “I have to pick up Iris in a few minutes anyway.”
“Suit yourself,” he said without stopping.
His strides were long and quick. She hustled to keep up until he veered from the path into a thick growth of leafy plants. It was even darker here; she was happy when Bon flicked on a flashlight, its tightly focused beam bobbing back and forth before them. The air was warm and damp, and the heavy vegetation around them blocked much of the ventilating breeze. Channy felt sweat droplets on her chocolate-toned skin.
