After flying for several hours, Zac and his family were finally coming up to the City of Snow.
‘We’d better land somewhere near here,’ said Grandpa as the Ski-Pod flew over the top of an enormous mountain. ‘They won’t want us bringing our technology any closer to the city than this.’
Zac’s mum nodded at Grandpa and moved across to the Ski-Pod’s control station. Zac checked the Proximity Scanning Unit on his wrist to see how close they were to the third piece of IRIS.
The Ski-Pod whizzed down toward the icy mountain-top. Zac wondered what would happen when they hit the slope. Wouldn’t this giant ball just keep on rolling down the mountain?
A moment later, Zac got an answer to his question.
SHUNK! SHUNK!
The floor shook as something shot out from underneath the Ski-Pod.
‘Landing skis activated,’ said Zac’s mum calmly. ‘Preparing to touch down.’
THUMP!
The Ski-Pod hit the snowy slope and started gliding smoothly down the mountain. Zac and the others stood up and started strapping their Ejector Packs on over their robes.
‘Make sure you leave all your gadgets behind,’ said Grandpa, as the Ski-Pod slid to a stop. ‘SpyPads, iPods, watches … anything with a battery in it.’
‘What about the PSUs?’ Zac asked. ‘We’ll need them to track down the next piece of IRIS, won’t we?’
‘We’ll put them in our pockets,’ said Grandpa, after thinking about it for a minute. ‘Keep them hidden. I don’t like bending the rules like this, but you’re right – we might need them.’
Zac slipped his PSU into his pocket. Then he grabbed the first two pieces of IRIS and slipped them in his backpack. He knew it was breaking the rules even more, but he couldn’t let the IRIS pieces out of his sight. Then he took one of the Snooters and led the way out into the freezing snow.
Far below them, at the foot of the mountain, Zac could see the City of Snow sparkling in the early morning sun. He stood with one foot on his Snooter and used the other foot to push off down the mountain.
The rest of his family did the same, their robes flying behind them.
The five Powers zoomed down the steep slopes, winding their way towards the city below.
WHOOOOOSH!
Icy wind whipped through Zac’s hair as he sped down the mountain. Finally, he thought, grinning, a bit of fun!
He twisted his Snooter around to get some air off a jump. Then he slid smoothly to a stop and turned to make sure he wasn’t leaving the others behind.
Uh-oh. With a sick jolt, he saw that two more family members had dropped in to join them.
Caz and Blackwood were standing further up the slope, looking down at them. They were in front of a blue snow cave in the side of the mountain.
Zac had seen caves like that before on his last mission in the Hidden Kingdom. He knew they were home to the highly dangerous White Ninjas, who lived in the mountains.
But there was no time to worry about ninjas now. Zac had Caz and Blackwood to deal with. ‘We’ve got company!’ he called to the others.
Zac saw Caz pull a tube-shaped gadget out of her backpack. It had a shiny black nozzle at one end and a little round scope at the other. Caz grabbed the two rubber handles at the base of the gadget and pointed it straight down at Zac.
GZZZZZZZZK!
Zac could hear a buzzing as the gadget powered up.
Looks like some people aren’t even TRYING to obey the No Technology law, thought Zac.
SHOOMP!
A snowball blasted out of the end of Caz’s gadget. Zac got ready to duck out of the way. But the snowball hit the ground only a metre or two down the slope from Caz, and then started rolling.
SHOOMP! SHOOMP!
Caz fired again, sending more snowballs flying. But again, the snowballs shot out just in front of her.
What IS that? Zac wondered. It didn’t seem like a very powerful gadget.
He turned his Snooter around to keep heading down the mountain, and sped off.
SHOOMP!
But when he glanced back, he realised what Caz was really doing. She wasn’t trying to shoot snowballs at them. She was shooting snowballs along the ground on purpose.
The snowballs hadn’t stopped when they’d hit the ground. They’d kept on rolling down the mountain, picking up more and more snow, getting bigger and bigger.
And now the Power family had four massive snow boulders heading straight for them.
