Bonfires were easy when you could turn the gravity down.

Javi had to admit, Caleb had picked a good spot for his signal fire. It was a half mile back along the debris trail, far away from any leaking jet fuel. Here, the belly of the descending aircraft had clipped a small hill, knocking a dozen trees out of the ground to create a clearing. The trees were too big to carry in normal gravity, but in low G each weighed no more than a box of schoolbooks.

Javi, Caleb, and Molly found a knocked-over tree in the darkness, then Anna turned down the gravity. While they carried the fresh log back, the timbers in the fire eased up into the air, carried by the updraft of their own flames.

“Get ready for heavy!” Anna called when the log was in position.

Full gravity returned, and the timbers went crashing down, spitting sparks as oxygen rushed into the fresh spaces created.

A wave of heat billowed out across the hill, and Javi smiled. It was like having a giant poker that stirred the signal fire at the push of a button.

If only there were someone to signal.

It hit him hard, there in the darkness—if they were on an alien planet, all alone, the monsters out there in the dark would always be there. But if Caleb was right and this was Earth, maybe there was hope.

Javi looked up at the sky. No rescue planes rumbled above the roar of the fire and the buzz of insects.

He sighed and bent down to pick up the water bottle full of glowflies—his best name so far. He’d been collecting them all afternoon. One day, their flashlights were going to run out of juice.

“Okay, Astronomy Boy,” Molly said. “It’s time to go up there and tell us what constellations you see.”

Caleb only nodded. Javi wondered if his bossy attitude was fading because he saw how well Team Killbot functioned as a group.

“So I’m just supposed to jump?” he asked.

Molly nodded. “We’re already on this hill. With a boost from us, you’ll go a few hundred feet up. That’ll clear the mist easy.”

“Sounds like a long way to fall back down.”

“It doesn’t matter how far you fall,” Oliver spoke up, his eyes still red but his voice steady. “You weigh so little, your terminal velocity is almost nothing.”

Caleb crossed his arms. “My what?”

“He doesn’t mean terminal in a bad way,” Javi said, grinning.

“Everything has a maximum falling speed,” Oliver explained. He picked up a feather left behind from the bird roasting, and let it spiral to the ground. “With the gravity turned way down, your terminal velocity is like this feather’s—too slow to hurt you.”

“But you can’t drop the device.” Anna held it up. “And don’t touch any of these buttons. Unless you want normal gravity coming back when you’re three hundred feet up.”

“I’m not stupid,” Caleb said. He looked ready to go, confident.

Too confident, Javi thought.

“And if you hear a sort of growling?” Javi said. “Those are shredder birds. That’s bad.”

Caleb stared, like he thought Javi was kidding.

Molly handed him a flare. “If you get into any trouble, light this.”

Javi, Yoshi, Anna, and Molly did the honors, gathering around Caleb and interlocking their palms. He was finally looking the right amount of scared, Javi thought, for someone about to be launched hundreds of feet into the air for the first time.

“Get ready for weightless,” Anna said.

She switched on the device and handed it to Caleb, and the wafty feeling of low G filled Javi’s body. Kira and Akiko took each other’s hands.

“Three, two, one, launch,” Molly cried, and with a grunt they sent Caleb skyward. As he and the device disappeared into the dark mists above, normal gravity settled over them all again.

“I wonder if that thing’s battery will ever run out,” Javi said, picking up his jar of glowflies. “I mean, does it even have a battery?”

“I’m more worried about him landing in the bonfire,” Oliver said. “Or would the rising hot air push him back up?”

Molly stared at them. “Did you guys worry about this stuff when it was me going up?”

“We trust you to improvise.” Javi looked up. “Caleb, not so much.”

“We should build some kind of portable engine,” Anna said. “We could us those little fans on the—”

“Wait,” Molly whispered. “Listen.”

A sound was building around them—an ominous rushing sound that made the small hairs on Javi’s arms tingle. It seemed to come from the sky, the trees, everywhere.

“Is it getting colder?” Anna asked.

Javi nodded. A chill had wrapped itself around him, and the trees began to stir.

“This is one we didn’t think about,” he said. “A storm!”

They all looked into the sky again. Caleb was up there somewhere, a kite without a string.

Molly knelt and grabbed some fronds, tore them up, and threw them high into the air. They caught the wind and drifted back along the wreckage trail, away from the crashed plane.

“He’s getting blown that way,” she called, pointing.

After a moment of silence, Javi flung out an arm. “There!”

“Clever boy,” Anna said. “He lit the flare.”

In the distance, a tiny red dot was descending. It brightened as it dropped down out of the mists, blazing in the darkness. But a moment later it had disappeared, fallen softly into the thick and unforgiving jungle.

At that moment, another sound rose up in the distance. It was a huge and mournful cry, as deep as a foghorn.

“That didn’t sound like a storm,” Javi said.

“Omoshiroi,” Kira said.