I FELT THE back of a hand brushing my arm. “Got him!” Marco said.
Fingers closed around my wrist. I was reeling back now, losing my balance.
The Loculus disappeared. All I could see was the panicked look on Marco’s face as he wrenched me away from the pit.
“Don’t let him fall backward!” Cass was shouting. “There’s a trap behind him!”
Marco held tight, lifting me upward with one arm. I came down hard on my feet and looked into three utterly astonished faces. “What happened?” I said.
“You were gone,” Aly said. “You were there one second and gone the next.”
“Just—foop!” Cass said, practically dancing with excitement. “You found it, Jack—right? You found the invisibility Loculus!”
“I guess I did,” I said.
Cass jumped, clapping his hands. From his pocket, Leonard leaped out. He hit the ground and began to run. We all stood gaping as he climbed thin air, up the wall of the pit, and then fell inside.
“Come back here, little yug!” Cass shouted. The scaly creature rolled around the bottom of the pit, looking oddly squashed, panicked by the fact that he was up against something solid that he couldn’t see.
As Cass reached down, he seemed to lose color. His outline became a trace line of gray. In a nanosecond he was gone.
And so was Leonard.
For a moment I saw and heard nothing. Then a disembodied “Gotcha!” and a spray of random color, which morphed in a fraction of a second into Cass.
He was standing before us again, grinning, with Leonard in his hand, as if nothing had happened.
“Beam me up, Scotty . . .” Aly mumbled.
Marco pumped his fist. “Epic! Let’s snatch that thing and get back home!”
I leaned back over the rim and dug my fingers down under the Loculus. It was cool, smooth to the touch. I couldn’t tell how heavy it was, because it seemed to move with my hand, as if powered from within. I didn’t know whether I was lifting it or it was lifting itself, guided by my motions. “Got it.”
I knew the others couldn’t see me. I also knew we had to get the heck out of there. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the sphere. Its insides were a translucent swirl of colors, making patterns like an ocean.
All around us, a low rumbling noise grew. I wasn’t fully aware of it until I felt the ground shake and the Loculus itself almost fall from my hand.
“Jack?” came Aly’s voice. “Wh-what’s going on?”
I heard a cracking sound from above. A piece of the ceiling dislodged and crashed to the floor. Then another.
Was this another booby trap?
Through the thick, rocky roof I could hear the cawing of birds and screeching of vizzeet. I could see black smoke from the fire in Kranag’s hut.
I held the Loculus to my chest and stepped backward. I felt Marco’s hand on my arm. Aly’s. Cass’s. With my free arm I guided Aly’s hand to the Loculus itself. “You don’t need to do that,” she said loudly, over the sound of the rumbling. “I can see it. As long as I’m touching you, I can see it. It’s like the power passes through us.”
The torch was now guttering and weak. A chunk of stone nearly dropped on my head. It crashed to the floor and broke into pieces.
The shaking was going on everywhere, not just in this room. It wasn’t a booby trap. It was an earthquake. The last thing we needed.
“Hurry!” Marco shouted. “Move!”
“Be careful of the traps!” Cass warned.
Too late. A door swung open in the floor. My foot sank inside. I let go of the Loculus, windmilling my arms. Marco and Cass both grabbed me and pulled. “Don’t let the Loculus go!” I shouted.
Aly caught it. I was able to swing my foot upward. It landed on solid ground.
A boom, like a plane breaking the sound barrier, passed from left to right. I heard a massive crash outside, followed by the cawing of the black bird and the wild keening of the vizzeet. Through the hole in the floor came a river of fur and whisker, undulating, growing . . .
“Rats!” Cass screamed. “I hate rats!”
My hair stood on end. The slithery creatures were sliding over my toes, squeaking, chattering, their little legs pumping frantically.
I saw teeth flashing in the light. Cass was swinging the torch downward, trying to scare them away. “Getoutofhere getoutofhere getoutofhere!” he shouted.
Aly shrieked. For the first time since I’d known him, Marco was screaming. We stumbled backward. I felt myself falling and willed my body to stay upright. “Run!” Aly’s voice called out.
“No, don’t!” Cass said. “Follow me! Force yourselves!”
Squeals bounced off the walls as a badly trembling Cass walked the correct, trap-free path through a wriggling carpet of rodents. They crawled up his ankles, jumped off his knees. He screamed, brushing away a couple that had run up into his tunic. I could feel their claws dig into my skin. They were too small, too light, too low to set off the traps. But any false move on our part could be lethal.
Cass screamed, tearing rodents from his hair. But he forced one foot in front of the other, tracing a path that no ordinary person would be able to remember. I could feel the squealing in my ears, as if one of them had burrowed inside my head.
The door loomed closer. Rats were scampering up and down the invisible iron bars of the cage. When Cass neared that—our last obstacle—he jumped straight for the entrance.
I flung myself out after him, kicking the nasty creatures away. Aly and Marco landed on top of me. I let go of the torch and it flew away on the ground.
We scrambled to our feet. Standing on a ledge, directly above the door, were four vizzeet.
As I frantically scraped rodents from my tunic, the screaming creatures jumped.