Lily screeched—a high-pitched yip she was embarrassed by later.
She reached out her hand and pulled a big lever—the biggest.
There weren’t many to pull.
Everything swam in front of her eyes. She saw the space monster struggling to open the door. She saw Katie turn toward her in horror . . . and then everything vanished.
They sifted down to their atoms—flung through space.
Across the arcs of a thousand suns.
Past worlds with rocky deserts and worlds with purple gardens.
Deep into the heart of the Horsehead Nebula.
* * *
The alien reeled backward in surprise. The humans were gone.
It quickly inspected the teleporter machine. It ran its hands over the controls.
It would not follow the humans. That would be foolish. They went to certain destruction.
It went to the window. It would follow the other human’s footprints through the fallen, frozen water, into the scraggly black growths.
It had many ways of finding what it needed to find.
It began clumsily climbing down the rope ladder to the snow.