D. MacHale - The Lost City of Faar

And the explosions continued. Saint Dane’s attack was relentless. The entire mountain shuddered with each new blast. I couldn’t imagine what kind of weapon he had that could destroy something that had been rock solid for centuries. Then I thought of Spader and Uncle Press. I didn’t yet know of the disaster that had happened in the hauler hangar. The only thing I could do was stick to the plan. So I ran for the tunnel that would lead us out of Faar and to my rendezvous with Uncle Press and Spader.

It was getting treacherous. Enough water was now falling from the dome that the pathways were getting slippery. Since many of these paths were right on the edge of humongous cliffs, I had to be careful or a simple slip would meansplat. So I moved quickly, but carefully. Soon I joined the flow of Faarians headed for the tunnel, and safety. It was still orderly, but people kept looking up at the falling water and I could tell they were on the edge of panic. Still, they held it together and kept moving toward the tunnel.

Then, just as I was about to enter the tunnel, I saw something that totally lifted my spirits.

“Hey!” I yelled.

Spader was coming out of the tunnel, carrying the other two air globes. It was a struggle for him because he was working against the tide of people flowing in the other direction. I stepped to the side of the path, out of the stream, and waited for him. When he finally got to me, he was all out of breath and excited.

“Where’s Uncle Press?” I asked.

“It’s a tum-tigger down there, Pendragon,” he blurted out. “They launched one hauler and then there was an explosion. They can’t open the doors to launch the rest.”

Oh, yeah, things were getting worse. Faar was on the verge of collapse, and the haulers weren’t on their way. Saint Dane was winning.

“Press is still down there,” he said. “I think we’ve got to get him out.” We both looked up at the dome. The water was coming down harder now. Whatever cracks were made by the explosions were getting bigger.

“Let’s go get him,” I said, and we both ran along the path back into the mountain to get to the aerovator.

It wasn’t easy. There were hundreds of Faarians moving in the other direction. We tried to be respectful, but ended up having to push our way through. Now was not the time to be polite. When we finally got into the mountain and to the tube with the aerovators, we saw a pretty huge Faarian guy directing traffic. He was making sure that as each aerovator arrived, everyone got off quickly and kept moving toward the escape tunnel.

Another aerovator arrived and people flooded out. As soon as it was empty, we tried to jump into the car. But this big guy grabbed us both and pulled us back.

“No passengers,” he said firmly.

“But we’ve got to get down to the hauler hangar!” I shouted.

“Don’t you hear the alarm?” the man said. “This is an emergency. These lifts can only be used for the evacuation.”

This guy was big and he wasn’t kidding around. There was no way Spader and I could push past him and force our way onto the aerovator. But we also couldn’t take the time to run all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. We were stuck. I had to make this guy understand how important it was that we get down there, so I grabbed him by the arm and forced him to look right at me. When I spoke, I tried to do it slowly and calmly.

“Listen to me,” I said. “There are people down there who are in danger. It’s really important that we get to them. We have to use this lift. Please let us pass.” I didn’t act all frantic or threaten the guy or anything. I just tried to get across how important this was. At first, I thought he was going to shove me out of the way, but a strange thing happened. He kept looking at me and I sensed that he was relaxing. It was totally weird. He went from being a brick wall in our way to a puppy dog. He then stepped out of the way, leaving the path open for us to enter the aerovator.

“I understand,” he said softly. “Good luck.”

Spader and I walked past him, not sure what had just happened. But we weren’t about to question it. We got on the aerovator, I grabbed the controls, and we headed down.

“What was that about, mate?” Spader asked. “It’s like you hypnotized him or something.”

“I have no idea,” was all I could answer. I was just as confused as he was. The only thing I could think of was the way Uncle Press had done the same thing to Wu Yenza back on Grallion. She was all ready to throw us out of her office, until Uncle Press talked her out of it. I was thinking now more than ever that the ability to get through people’s toughest defenses might be a special Traveler ability, like understanding all languages. This was something I was going to have to learn more about, no doubt about it.

But that would have to wait, for we were almost at the base of Faar’s mountain.

“We’ve got to get them out of there,” I said. “This place is going to get very wet, very fast.”

“They’re all working on the water doors,” Spader said. “I’ll bet they don’t even know what’s going on out here.”

The aerovator hadn’t even stopped moving when the two of us jumped out and ran through the tunnel to get out of the mountain and reach the hauler hangar. One thing I noticed right away was that there were no more Faarians evacuating down here. That was good. Maybe it meant that the city was nearly empty. I could only imagine what it looked like outside of Faar, in the ocean with thousands of green swimmers in the water. I knew they would be okay out there, but if the dome over Faar continued to crack, they wouldn’t have a home to come back to.

It was a sad thought, but there were bigger problems to deal with right now. Spader and I ran out into the open to find that it was pouring rain. Water was now flooding through the cracks in the dome.

I looked up at Faar’s mountain and was relieved to see that the paths weren’t clogged with people anymore. That meant everyone was getting out. From the looks of things, it was none too soon.

We continued running toward the hauler hangar. Spader held the two air globes, and I had mine. I hoped that when we got inside we would find that they had fixed the damage and that the haulers were all on their way. Once that was done, we could get the heck out of Faar and deal with Saint Dane. That wasn’t a happy thought.

We were about twenty yards away from the entrance to the hangar, when we heard it.

It sounded like thunder. It was different than the explosion sounds. The explosions were a low rumble. This new sound was like the sharp peal that comes right after a nasty bolt of lightning strikes. But it wasn’t short and sweet. No, this sound continued as if it were the longest crack of thunder in history. Unfortunately crack was the perfect word to describe it.

Spader and I froze and looked up to see a sight so horrifying, I hate to even remember it long enough to write about it. The dome that protected Faar from the ocean above was beginning to crack. I saw long slits of light starting to spiderweb their way across the coral-covered surface. In seconds the force of the water would smash through and flood the rest of Faar.

“Uncle Press!” I shouted, and started to run for the hangar.

“No!” yelled Spader, and pulled me back.

It was a good thing, too, because an instant later, a section of dome caved in. It wasn’t the whole dome, just one section, but it was directly over us. If I had kept going, I would have been crushed by the torrent of water that was on its way down.

“We gotta get out of here!” Spader shouted.

I couldn’t move. I looked up at the broken pieces of dome and the tidal wave of water that was now plummeting toward us. I then looked to the hangar. Uncle Press was in there.