As I stood on the steps of the council platform I looked up at the glittering dome that had kept the oceans of Cloral away from Faar for hundreds of generations. What I saw looked like rain. The droplets glistened in the light as they fell. Believe it or not it looked beautiful, like thousands of small, glittering diamonds falling from the sky.
But these beautiful gems brought some seriously bad news. If the dome were cracked and letting in water, where would it stop? Could the pounding that Saint Dane was delivering weaken the dome? If that was the case, then the pressure from the millions upon millions of pounds of water might eventually crack it—like an eggshell. That image was too horrifying to even imagine. I could only hope that the alarm was sounded early enough so that Faar would be evacuated.
And the explosions continued. Saint Dane’s attack was relentless. The entire mountain shuddered with each new blast. I couldn’t imagine what kind of weapon he had that could destroy something that had been rock solid for centuries.
Then I thought of Spader and Uncle Press. I didn’t yet know of the disaster that had happened in the hauler hangar. The only thing I could do was stick to the plan. So I ran for the tunnel that would lead us out of Faar and to my rendezvous with Uncle Press and Spader.
It was getting treacherous. Enough water was now falling from the dome that the pathways were getting slippery. Since many of these paths were right on the edge of humongous cliffs, I had to be careful or a simple slip would mean splat. So I moved quickly, but carefully. Soon I joined the flow of Faarians headed for the tunnel, and safety. It was still orderly, but people kept looking up at the falling water and I could tell they were on the edge of panic. Still, they held it together and kept moving toward the tunnel.
Then, just as I was about to enter the tunnel, I saw something that totally lifted my spirits.
“Hey!” I yelled.
Spader was coming out of the tunnel, carrying the other two air globes. It was a struggle for him because he was working against the tide of people flowing in the other direction. I stepped to the side of the path, out of the stream, and waited for him. When he finally got to me, he was all out of breath and excited.
“Where’s Uncle Press?” I asked.
“It’s a tum-tigger down there, Pendragon,” he blurted out. “They launched one hauler and then there was an explosion. They can’t open the doors to launch the rest.”
Oh, yeah, things were getting worse. Faar was on the verge of collapse, and the haulers weren’t on their way. Saint Dane was winning.
“Press is still down there,” he said. “I think we’ve got to get him out.”
We both looked up at the dome. The water was coming down harder now. Whatever cracks were made by the explosions were getting bigger.
“Let’s go get him,” I said, and we both ran along the path back into the mountain to get to the aerovator.
It wasn’t easy. There were hundreds of Faarians moving in the other direction. We tried to be respectful, but ended up having to push our way through. Now was not the time to be polite. When we finally got into the mountain and to the tube with the aerovators, we saw a pretty huge Faarian guy directing traffic. He was making sure that as each aerovator arrived, everyone got off quickly and kept moving toward the escape tunnel.
Another aerovator arrived and people flooded out. As soon as it was empty, we tried to jump into the car. But this big guy grabbed us both and pulled us back.
“No passengers,” he said firmly.
“But we’ve got to get down to the hauler hangar!” I shouted.
“Don’t you hear the alarm?” the man said. “This is an emergency. These lifts can only be used for the evacuation.”
This guy was big and he wasn’t kidding around. There was no way Spader and I could push past him and force our way onto the aerovator. But we also couldn’t take the time to run all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. We were stuck. I had to make this guy understand how important it was that we get down there, so I grabbed him by the arm and forced him to look right at me. When I spoke, I tried to do it slowly and calmly.
“Listen to me,” I said. “There are people down there who are in danger. It’s really important that we get to them. We have to use this lift. Please let us pass.” I didn’t act all frantic or threaten the guy or anything. I just tried to get across how important this was. At first, I thought he was going to shove me out of the way, but a strange thing happened. He kept looking at me and I sensed that he was relaxing. It was totally weird. He went from being a brick wall in our way to a puppy dog. He then stepped out of the way, leaving the path open for us to enter the aerovator.
“I understand,” he said softly. “Good luck.”
Spader and I walked past him, not sure what had just happened. But we weren’t about to question it. We got on the aerovator, I grabbed the controls, and we headed down.
“What was that about, mate?” Spader asked. “It’s like you hypnotized him or something.”
“I have no idea,” was all I could answer. I was just as confused as he was. The only thing I could think of was the way Uncle Press had done the same thing to Wu Yenza back on Grallion. She was all ready to throw us out of her office, until Uncle Press talked her out of it. I was thinking now more than ever that the ability to get through people’s toughest defenses might be a special Traveler ability, like understanding all languages. This was something I was going to have to learn more about, no doubt about it.
But that would have to wait, for we were almost at the base of Faar’s mountain.
“We’ve got to get them out of there,” I said. “This place is going to get very wet, very fast.”
“They’re all working on the water doors,” Spader said. “I’ll bet they don’t even know what’s going on out here.”
The aerovator hadn’t even stopped moving when the two of us jumped out and ran through the tunnel to get out of the mountain and reach the hauler hangar. One thing I noticed right away was that there were no more Faarians evacuating down here. That was good. Maybe it meant that the city was nearly empty. I could only imagine what it looked like outside of Faar, in the ocean with thousands of green swimmers in the water. I knew they would be okay out there, but if the dome over Faar continued to crack, they wouldn’t have a home to come back to.
It was a sad thought, but there were bigger problems to deal with right now. Spader and I ran out into the open to find that it was pouring rain. Water was now flooding through the cracks in the dome.
I looked up at Faar’s mountain and was relieved to see that the paths weren’t clogged with people anymore. That meant everyone was getting out. From the looks of things, it was none too soon.
We continued running toward the hauler hangar. Spader held the two air globes, and I had mine. I hoped that when we got inside we would find that they had fixed the damage and that the haulers were all on their way. Once that was done, we could get the heck out of Faar and deal with Saint Dane. That wasn’t a happy thought.
We were about twenty yards away from the entrance to the hangar, when we heard it.
It sounded like thunder. It was different than the explosion sounds. The explosions were a low rumble. This new sound was like the sharp peal that comes right after a nasty bolt of lightning strikes. But it wasn’t short and sweet. No, this sound continued as if it were the longest crack of thunder in history. Unfortunately crack was the perfect word to describe it.
Spader and I froze and looked up to see a sight so horrifying, I hate to even remember it long enough to write about it. The dome that protected Faar from the ocean above was beginning to crack. I saw long slits of light starting to spiderweb their way across the coral-covered surface. In seconds the force of the water would smash through and flood the rest of Faar.
“Uncle Press!” I shouted, and started to run for the hangar.
“No!” yelled Spader, and pulled me back.
It was a good thing, too, because an instant later, a section of dome caved in. It wasn’t the whole dome, just one section, but it was directly over us. If I had kept going, I would have been crushed by the torrent of water that was on its way down.
“We gotta get out of here!” Spader shouted.
I couldn’t move. I looked up at the broken pieces of dome and the tidal wave of water that was now plummeting toward us. I then looked to the hangar. Uncle Press was in there.
“Pendragon, move!” shouted Spader, and pulled me back toward the mountain. We had maybe ten seconds before the water would hit. Would it be enough time to get to the aerovator? The two of us booked back toward the mountain tunnel on a dead run. We got inside, but we weren’t safe yet. As soon as the water hit, it would flood the tunnel and keep coming. This was the beginning of the end of Faar.
I heard a deafening boom outside behind us as the pieces of dome and water crashed down. Immediately the water came surging through the tunnel, headed for us. All we could do was run and stay ahead of the torrent that was quickly shooting through the tunnel to get us.
We made it to the tube and saw that our lift was still there. That was huge, because if it hadn’t been, we’d be dead. We both dove in and turned back to see the flood of water was rushing toward us. I grabbed the control stick and slammed it all the way forward. The aerovator blasted off so quickly that the two of us were thrown to the floor. I had a death grip on the control lever. There was no way we were stopping. Now our biggest concern was if the rising water would destroy the aerovator tube before we got out. I held my breath, expecting the speeding car to suddenly stop. But it didn’t. We kept rising. Moments later we were back to the escape-tunnel level.
The Faarian guy who was guarding the lift a few minutes before was gone. No other Faarians were around. Spader and I ran through the empty corridor. I feared what we would find outside of there. Would the dome have totally collapsed? If that had happened, we might as well stop running because it would be over for us. The weight of the water would be too much. The whole mountain would probably be crushed.
As we got closer to the end of the tunnel that led out of the mountain, the sound of rushing water was deafening. It sounded like Niagara Falls out there. This gave me hope. It meant that the whole dome hadn’t collapsed, just the one section that we saw crumble. If that were the case then we still had a shot at getting out. The two of us reached the entrance and cautiously looked outside.
What we saw was both horrifying and wondrous. So far the dome was holding. But there was a huge, jagged hole that must have been thirty yards wide. Water was pouring down so hard, it looked like it was coming from a powerful hose. Imagine a hole thirty yards wide with a solid stream of water powering through. It was awesome, and frightening.
“Pendragon, look,” said Spader.
He was pointing down. What I saw made me catch my breath. The water was rising inside Faar. It was only a matter of time before the entire city would be underwater. But that’s not what hit me. Spader was pointing to the hauler hangar. The water was rapidly rising and would soon cover the huge building. If this weren’t bad enough, the sight that really made my heart sink was near the door where we had been only a few minutes before. There was a pile of rubble that must have been pieces of the collapsed section of dome. It had fallen right in front of the hangar, blocking the entrance. I had hoped that Uncle Press and the Faarians would be protected inside the hangar. Their only hope would be to wait until Faar was submerged, then swim out. Uncle Press could even buddy breathe with one of the Faarians in their swimskins. They would make something work.
But now that the entrance was blocked under a ton of rubble, there was no way they’d get out of there. Now their only hope would be if they could repair the pen doors and escape that way.
“This is bad, Pendragon,” Spader said solemnly. “If they don’t get those hauler doors open—”
“Yeah, I get it,” I said.
The two of us stood there in a daze. There was every probability that the hauler hangar was going to be a tomb for those brave Faarians, and for my Uncle Press.
“We gotta go,” Spader then said.
I looked up toward the tunnel that led out of Faar and saw that we had actually caught a break. The rush of water that was powering down from the dome was on a free fall to the bottom. If it had hit any of the paths, it would have wiped them out. But as it was, the paths weren’t being hit and we could still make it up to the escape tunnel. There was some rubble from the crumbled dome lying around, but nothing we couldn’t jump over or run around. But we had to do it fast. The water level was rising.
There wasn’t a single Faarian left. They had all made it out. We got to the tunnel safely, but before ducking inside I remembered something and stopped. I turned around and looked up toward the Council Circle where I had left Abador. I briefly wondered what he was going to do. It was clear now, Faar was doomed. Did that mean he was going to transpire . . . whatever that meant?
One look up at the distant platform told me that whatever transpire meant, it wasn’t going to happen. That’s because the white marble roof that had protected the Council Circle was gone. It must have been knocked over by pieces of the falling dome. That could only mean one thing—Abador was dead. If he had stayed at the podium, which I was pretty sure he had, then the crashing marble would surely have killed him. And since nothing else dramatic had happened to Faar, I could only assume that it had gotten him before he had the chance to transpire. My heart went out to the old man. His love for Faar and all that it stood for was huge. He had saved his people from a horrible death, but he failed in his last important act. After seeing the dome collapse, he would surely have begun to transpire but he never got the chance. I felt sad for the man who wasn’t able to help Faar through to the final destiny that his ancestors had so carefully planned for.
“Uh, Pendragon, can we leave now?” asked Spader.
I turned away from Faar for what was sure to be the last time and followed my friend into the tunnel. We ran past the empty locker room and right to the spot where we had left our gear. Spader put Uncle Press’s air globe down next to his water sled.
“You never know, right?” he said.
Yeah. You never know. But you usually have a pretty good idea. I didn’t think Uncle Press would be needing his air globe anymore. For a moment time stood still. Seeing that air globe did it. It didn’t matter to me that Faar was crashing down, or that Saint Dane was about to destroy Cloral. All I could think about for those few seconds was that I had lost my Uncle Press. After telling everybody else how they had to be strong and do the right thing and make tough choices, all I wanted to do was stand there and cry.
Spader must have realized what I was going through, because he put a hand on my shoulder, and said, “Time for that later, mate. We have to go.”
Right. We were outta there. We both grabbed our water sleds and headed back through the tunnel. We soon hit the water. It quickly got deep, first covering our ankles, then our knees, our hips, and then finally became so deep that we had to start swimming. We popped on our air globes, triggered our water sleds and submerged into the waters of the tunnel.
Luckily the lights were still on so we could see where we were going. It would have been tough trying to find our way in the pitch black. We sped along, back through the tunnel, without saying a word. I can’t speak for Spader, but I knew where my thoughts were. Though it looked as if we were about to escape the destruction of Faar alive, we were about to enter another mess. No doubt waiting for us in the ocean outside were Saint Dane and his raiders. I only then realized that once the dome cracked, the explosions had stopped. I guess Saint Dane had done all the damage he needed. He had destroyed Faar and kept the haulers from saving the underwater farms. His mission was complete.
The sad truth was that we had failed Cloral. Saint Dane’s plan for pushing the territory into chaos was about to succeed. Food would grow scarce, people would fight to get whatever safe supply was left, and who knew how many thousands would die from either starvation or poisoning.
And still, we had to face Saint Dane. He was out there, waiting for us, I was sure. All we could hope to do now was escape to fight another day.
We swam back to the large rock door that led to the open ocean. The door was wide open, and why not? This wonderful city was history. Why bother to close it? Spader and I shot out into open water, not really sure what we would find.
“Gotta be careful, mate,” said Spader. “Don’t want to get sucked back into that hole in the dome.”
Good point. There were millions of tons of water flooding into that hole. It was like a giant, open drain. It would be easy to get sucked in. I hoped that the Faarians realized this and were keeping their distance.
As we rode our water sleds away from the tunnel to get away from the dome, I actually felt a slight tug, as if we were swimming against a strong current. I knew it was the pull of the water being sucked into the hole in the dome. Luckily we were far enough away that our water sleds kept us moving forward and safe. Did I say safe? Yeah, right. Real safe. I looked ahead and began to see shapes. They were hard to see at first because they weren’t much different than the color of the water, but the closer we got, the more distinct they became. In a few moments I realized what they were.
It was the people of Faar. There were thousands of them, all floating in the water, looking back at the coral reef dome that had protected their city and kept it hidden. It was gut wrenching. These people were now all homeless and stranded in the middle of the ocean.
And we were stranded right along with them. I began thinking about how we could find the closest habitat and get the word out to the aquaneers to start picking up these people, when something caught my eye.
At first I thought it was a shadow. But it was really big, like a shadow from a cloud when it crosses the sun. It was far away and blurry, so I couldn’t tell what it really was. What I could tell for certain was: It was coming toward us.
“You see that?” I asked Spader, and pointed toward the moving shadow.
Spader spun around and looked.
“Never seen any fish that big,” he said.
“Maybe it’s a school of fish, or a whale . . . or . . .”
The words stuck in my throat. As the shadow drew closer, it became very clear how Saint Dane had attacked Faar. I also knew why Spader hadn’t seen it coming when he was on the surface.
Saint Dane was in a submarine. It was a huge, black, monstrous-looking craft with a flat bottom and rounded body. My guess was that it fired underwater missiles, just like the battleship he used to attack Grallion. There was no doubt about it, this was a weapon of war, and it was at Saint Dane’s command.
“About time you two showed up!” came a voice from behind us.
Spader and I both spun around to see four raiders floating there, each with a water sled and holding spearguns on us.
“Looks like you were the last to leave the party,” one laughed. “There’s somebody wants to see you.”
Two of the raiders moved to either side of us, while the other two trailed from behind, guarding us with their spearguns. They motioned for us to swim along with them. There was nothing we could do. We were trapped and on our way to Saint Dane’s submarine.