“Reg,” Rosa said, “does it mean anything that Eddie and I still have legs?”
“It means something to Eddie,” Eddie said.
Reg looked sideways at her, flipped a switch overhead, and then made an adjustment with the throttle. “Huh. It means the egg didn’t burn them off. Which means that there was no great gush of fire coming from that craft when it changed its mode of flight.”
“It was really hot,” Eddie said.
Reg was excited now. “These eggs are capable of flying as airplanes, as spacecraft, and in extradimensional space—and we don’t even know what that involves. But they can switch from one to the other seamlessly.”
Rosa nodded. “Which might mean they’re using the same fuel source for each type of flight.”
“No bloom of fire,” Reg said.
“It was really hot,” Eddie said. “It hurt.”
“No rocket boosters fell away,” Rosa said. “No mashed Rosa and Eddie.”
“Eddie was very uncomfortable,” he said. “Eddie would like some acknowledgment of his suffering.”
“Psssh,” Reg said. “Eddie, what does the fact that you still have legs tell you?”
“That my heroics were successful, if undervalued?”
Rosa looked at him from under her brows. Reg took the craft into a shallow dive, so they could see IA2 spread out before them.
“Their teams just appeared on our runway, right? They didn’t do some long descent through the stratosphere. They must just have come …”
“Straight from the extra dimensions,” Reg said. “They’re sewn onto the universe like a batting to a quilt.”
“They’re everywhere,” Rosa said. “Not like a portal you have to fly to.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “You don’t have to open a wardrobe and walk through.” He looked defensive. “What? I like to read.”
“Let’s pick up Trevor,” Rosa said. “And then get out of here.”
“He climbed to the top of the tower,” Reg said. “See him?” He pointed to a little guy sitting on top of the launch tower platform, swinging his legs. He looked like a photo Rosa had seen of Depression-era steelworkers having lunch on a beam way over the city they were building.
“Guess he’s not afraid of heights,” she said.
“This thing won’t hover,” Reg said. “I can go slow, but he’s gonna have to jump.”
“That’s gonna be hard,” Rosa said.
“Hey, just circle for a minute,” Eddie said, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. “I want to make a call.”
Sometimes the smallest decisions are the most catastrophic.
“Your cell isn’t going to work here,” Reg said. “You won’t have the same phone number. The worlds don’t line up that closely.”
“It’s from this Earth,” he said. “I stole it from myself when we were saying good-bye at Grandma’s.”
Rosa’s eyes popped.
“I thought I might need it. Anyway, he’s got a truck.”
She narrowed one eye at him.
“What? It’s mine.”
She rolled her eyes. He opened the hatch and stood beside it, holding the phone out. He pushed “1” on speed dial. She could hear it ring—eight times. A person could climb two stairs in the time each ring took. And a person was.
“Hello?”
Rosa could hear a voice, faint but clear. It made her smile. She wondered what hearing it did to Eddie.
“Grandma? It’s Eddie.”
“Eddie! Did the Reds win? I haven’t seen the score yet.”
“Um, I don’t know.”
She was silent for a moment. “You’re not the Eddie who drove to Cincinnati and stayed for a Reds game.”
“No. I’m the Eddie currently circling the launch tower at your IA headquarters.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m well blessed with Eddies. What do you need?”
“How do we fuel up this egg? The spacecraft, I mean.”
“Oh, that’s hard. But why do you need to?”
“Um. We need to get home.”
“I know. But you don’t need much fuel. Didn’t you notice how small the fuel cell is that’s on right now?”
“But we’re going home. It’s … a long way.”
He could hear the smile when she spoke. “No, it’s not. If you go into extradimensional travel immediately, you won’t need much fuel. You should make it just fine. It would be even faster, but we’ve rerouted to avoid junk we left in the extra dimensions from our first attempts at traveling there.”
“You littered in the extra dimensions? Oh, Grandma.”
She laughed. “Just go straight to XD. And leave your cell phone on the tower, will you? You’re gonna be mad about that.”
Eddie grinned. She was right. “Yeah. Thanks, Grandma.”
“You’re welcome, Eddie. Love you.” He clicked off. And looked up.
“Aw, crap.”