“What do you mean it’s working fine?” Dash bellowed. “Obviously it’s not working fine, or we’d be talking to them!”

STEAM held up his robot hands imploringly. “I’ve run the diagnostics, yes sir. The ZRK Commanders have been in and out of the system as well. Everything is in order.”

“Then why can we not reach them?” Dash lamented.

STEAM whirred and grunted. “Dozens of possible reasons, yes sir. Would you like them as a list, a graph, or a table?”

“Never mind,” Dash said, tossing himself into his captain’s chair. “I can imagine plenty of reasons all on my own.”

“Imagination is a powerful thing, yes sir,” STEAM said. “Like a runaway train, like a boulder rolling downhill, like a lion about to—”

Dash jumped up again. “How long do we wait before we go down ourselves and try to figure out what’s happened?”

“We can’t,” Piper said. The Cloud Cat was down at the surface. “We just have to be patient.”

“What if they’re in trouble?” Dash wondered aloud. “What if they need our help?”

Piper shook her head. “If there’s some horrible trap waiting down there, we can’t walk into it after them. The mission has to go on.”

Dash really didn’t like the sound of that. He knew Piper was just being reasonable and logical, but talk like that didn’t do anything to take the edge off his worry.

Horrible trap.

The words echoed in his brain like clanging cymbals. A horrible trap, on Infinity.

Dash’s eyes widened. Imagination was one thing. Memory was another. Dash remembered something suddenly, something Chris had said while they were in Gamma Speed.

“I’ve figured them out,” Chris had said. “The Jackals won’t trick me again.”

They had been talking about the upcoming challenges of the new planet, just the two of them. Chris had seemed to think the dangers of this planet were more manageable than some of the others. “Everything that might hurt you, you can see coming.”

“Let’s pull up everything we can on the Jackals,” Dash said to Piper. “There might be something we don’t know. Something about them tricking people. Some kind of Jackal trap.” Maybe Chris really hadn’t told them everything he knew. Surprise, surprise.

“I was exaggerating,” Piper said. She regretted the choice of words. “I don’t think there’s really a trap. I think they’re just too deep underground.” She tapped on her tablet screen, accessing the ship’s database.

“What does it say about the Jackals?” Dash asked.

“It’s a very short entry,” Piper said. “There’s even less than what Chris told us in the briefing.”

“Read it anyway.”

“ ‘Jackals are hybrid humanoid-canine in appearance, bone structure, and musculature,’ ” Piper read aloud. She glanced up. “Do you want to see the picture again?”

Dash shook his head.

“ ‘They are detail-oriented, highly intelligent, and strict in protocol. Their culture places a high premium on data collection and scientific research. Members of guest species are universally welcomed, afforded special quarters, and invited to extend their stay.’ ”

Dash waited for Piper to continue. When she didn’t, he said, “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Piper reported. She paused. “What do you think that last part means?”

“Chris said the Jackals are big on hospitality.”

Piper frowned. “What if it’s not that simple?” Her brow furrowed thoughtfully.

“What are you thinking?” Dash asked.

Piper didn’t want to say out loud what she was thinking. She was wondering about the nature of the “special quarters” and how firmly the Jackals’ guests would be “invited” to stay.

“Nothing really,” Piper said. “I was just wondering again if Chris actually told us everything we should know about the Jackals.”

“ ‘Invited to extend their stay,’ ” Dash murmured, already hovering around the same train of thought.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” Piper said, making her voice as upbeat and reassuring as possible. “It hasn’t been that long, considering the tunnels and the Weavers and the whole scope of the mission. They’ll check in as soon as they can. Until then, we wait.”

Dash clenched his fists. Waiting, apparently, was not his strong suit. Doing something, anything, was better than doing nothing.

“Run the comms diagnostic again,” Dash told STEAM.

“Repeat the procedure unnecessarily? Yes sir,” said the robot, going to work on the console.

—

Snap. The Saw’s jaws took off the corner of the rock wall. Carly and Thunder soared by in the nick of time.

Gabriel was about to be less fortunate.

He yanked on Barrel’s reins. Luckily, his zigzag flight pattern had caused him to fall behind the others. Far enough behind that he had an extra few seconds to react. He narrowly avoided slamming smack into the Saw. Instead, he zigged ahead of it.

Barrel stretched his short front legs forward. He tucked up his back legs under his haunches as he vaulted past the snapping Saw. Its metallic jaws crunched down where Gabriel’s body had been a split second before.

“Yaaah!” Gabriel cried as a cloud of the Saw’s construction-dust breath overtook him. “Too close, guys. Too close.”

“Are you okay?” Carly asked.

“I live for a wild ride,” Gabriel choked out. He coughed and shook the cave crumbs off his shoulders.

Chris slowed to a stop. Knight flapped his wings and brought himself to a hover, then set down. Just up ahead, the tunnel gave way to a cavern.

Carly landed next to him. She glanced over her shoulder as Gabriel bounced off the wall a final time and stuttered to a landing. She wondered if he was too busy half crashing, or if he might be thinking the same as she was—Chris’s decision back at the crossroads had been a little reckless. Racing a Saw for no reason? They could have turned back and looked for a safer route. The map showed plenty of other lake caverns in the area.

None of the rest of the crew would have made that choice. Chris had endangered them, in favor of what seemed easy. Did he care about them at all?

Carly tugged Thunder’s reins until he walked up next to Chris on Knight. “You can’t keep doing things like that,” she said.

Chris looked at her. “What?”

“Putting us at risk without explanation. Acting like you’re in charge.”

Chris’s eyes flashed with confusion. “The nature of the mission involves risk.”

“Yes, but—” Carly began.

“I’m doing more to protect you than you realize,” Chris said. “Everything has gone quite smoothly, in fact.”

“We just almost got eaten. For the second time.”

Chris appeared to be thinking. “Colonel Ramos has allowed us…Do you have any idea how many years it took me…”

Carly shook her head. He wasn’t getting it. “On the ship, you can be mysterious and do your own thing,” she told him. “On planet, we have to act as a team. It can’t be every man for himself.”

Chris tilted his head slightly. “You and I are not exactly ‘men.’ ”

“It’s a saying,” Carly answered. “But I think you already know that.” She dismounted, and strode ahead toward the mouth of the tunnel.

She found herself standing on the pebbled shores of a glistening blue lake. The Weavers’ eyes illuminated the dim cavern beyond the threshold. Here, the walls were silvery smooth and slightly damp. They reflected the Weavers’ light like mirrors.

Thunder reared back gently onto his hind legs and pointed his eye beams upward for a moment. The space stretched higher than his light could reach.

“It’s gorgeous,” Carly breathed. The scenery was postcard pretty. She stood for a while, appreciating the awesomeness of being one of only two Earthlings ever to set foot in the heart of Infinity.

“Extra cool,” Gabriel agreed as he came up beside her. Carly noticed him shuffling with something along the edge of his belt. She couldn’t see what it was.

The lakeshore sloped down from the tunnels to the water line. It consisted of glittering pebbles of all kinds of color. They glinted in the Weavers’ sweeping eye-light. Some appeared solid and dark like rocks, while others gleamed with the transparent clarity of jewels. Carly was dazzled by the pebbled shore. She knelt and picked up one of the small stones.

“Sawtooth feces, I believe,” Chris commented. “Undigestible impurities in the rock.”

“Ewww.” Carly wrinkled her nose and dropped the pebble. She rubbed her hand rapidly on her pants leg.

“Awesome!” Gabriel said. “The Saws poop jewelry?” He scooped a handful of the stones into his jacket pocket to take home with them.

Carly giggled. “Well, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad.”

A thick fuzz of moss grew on the walls, with clusters of gnats or flies buzzing around the largest moss clumps. Tucked within the moss patches, Carly noticed snaking green tendrils similar to those on her mossflower. But no more actual flowers in sight.

Finding the lake cavern was the first step to locating some Stingers. Carly looked up and could barely see the topmost reaches, even with the light of all the Weavers. Small things fluttered in the sky space above. Those must be the Stingers.

Behind her, Chris spoke softly. “Look where we are,” he said. “You cannot imagine how long it took me to get this far, the first time. The Jackals keep a very close eye on their…guests.”

Carly glanced back at him. On the ship, he had said he wanted to smooth things over with the Jackals for them. “What aren’t you telling us?” she asked.

Chris stared into the lake cavern, like he was seeing some other place or time. “You don’t need to know everything,” he said. “You don’t want to know everything.”

Carly felt a flash of frustration. Who was Chris to decide what they needed or wanted to know?

“This place is huge,” Gabriel observed. Looking up gave him a hint of vertigo. “How far underground are we?”

Two of the batlike creatures did a flyby. Gabriel flinched backward.

“They won’t leave the cavern,” Chris reminded them. “They need the moisture of the lake. The caves are too dry.”

Carly watched as the Stingers zoomed for the moss clusters. Two tiny mouthfuls of gnats became Stinger food.

“Whoa.” Gabriel stuck his hand across the threshold into the lake cavern. Amazingly, he could feel the difference. It wasn’t like water on his skin or anything; it was more like stepping out of an air-conditioned building in the early summer. The air was instantly a few degrees warmer, and just a bit thicker. He sensed that if he went all the way in, he might begin to sweat.

The Weavers stamped impatiently along the lake cavern threshold, eager to cross inside and fly higher.

“It’s okay, boy.” Carly patted Thunder’s mane. “You’ll get your chance in a minute.” The cavern was both inviting and a little scary. The tunnel felt like a protected space—you knew what was immediately behind and beside you. Once in the cavern, that certainty would be gone. The small flitting Stingers moved so fast it was hard to even see them individually.

“We’ll need the nets ready,” Chris said.

Gabriel had already unhooked his net from his backpack. Carly moved to free hers too.

At the far side of the cavern, a Saw slithered out of another tunnel. It wriggled across the sloping shore to drink from the lake. The slurping sound it made was almost as harsh as its chewing. The noise echoed in the cavern.

From above, a swirling cloud of Stingers descended upon the Saw. They landed on its back, their tails thwacking fiercely against its leathery skin.

“He’s a goner,” Gabriel lamented. He didn’t feel particularly bad for the Saw. One enemy down, as far as he was concerned.

“The Saws are immune to the Stinger venom,” Chris said. “In fact, I suspect the Jackals’ Stinger cure serum is some distillation of Saw’s blood.”

“Are the Weavers immune?” Gabriel asked.

Chris cocked his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “The Jackals never seemed worried about it. I’m sure they’ve studied the question.”

That did not sound promising. Carly stroked Thunder’s muzzle. She didn’t want anything to happen to him. Would he be risking his life to help them?

“The Stingers won’t fly too close to the Weavers anyway,” Chris said. “That’s why we need these long poles.”

“Let’s go get ’em,” Gabriel said, climbing astride Barrel again.

The Weavers pranced restlessly once all the riders were on board. They were eager to enter the cavern.

Carly figured it must be okay, if they were so excited.

They rode into the cavern. Chris circled low, aiming for the bunch of Stingers crowded around the thirsty Saw. Barrel took Gabriel through some sinewy swirling loops above the water. Thunder apparently could not resist flying highest. Wind whipped through Carly’s hair as he carried her up, and up some more.

It was beautiful. She could have simply soared with him forever, but she had to keep her mind on task.

Carly nudged Thunder toward a collection of Stingers parked on craggy stalactites near the ceiling. They hung like bats, talons clutching the uneven surface of the rocks.

They looked like easy pickings. But as Carly drew close, the Stingers’ slack wings began to ruffle with the wind from Thunder’s much larger wings. The Stingers stirred and took off, fleeing the area. Carly and Thunder gave chase, but the swift little creatures got a good head start.

Below, Gabriel and Chris were having a similar problem. Fly close enough to reach, and the Stingers would flee. The same thing happened, over and over.

The problem soon became obvious. The Weavers’ wings did keep the Stingers at bay—too much so. The Stingers were not flying close enough to catch with the nets. The net poles were not long enough.

“We’re making wind, so let’s use it in our favor,” Gabriel suggested.

The three flew to opposite sides of the cavern. Then they flew toward each other, and the Stingers got pushed together by the wind. They swirled into a mass in the center.

Gabriel, Carly, and Chris leaned forward, extending their poles. They dragged their nets through the Stingers, in a scooping motion.

Carly frowned in frustration. Even working together, not very many Stingers had gotten into her bag. She tried to swipe again, but the batlike creatures escaped upward, toward the craggy recesses of the cave.

She closed her net’s drawstring to keep the few she had gotten. Very few. It was not looking good.

After ten minutes of trying, Gabriel and Carly landed near the tunnel again. They trotted into the safety zone and stopped to compare notes. They sat side by side astride their Weavers and studied the glittering lake.

“This isn’t working,” Carly said.

Gabriel nodded. “I know.”

There were seven Stingers in Carly’s net, about ten in Gabriel’s, and only four in Chris’s. He landed beside them and showed his tiny haul.

“These Weavers are larger than the ones I based my calculations on,” Chris admitted. He glared, almost angrily, at the net pole he’d created. “It’s not long enough. I should have realized this could happen.”

“It’s going to take forever to get enough,” Carly said. “We need hundreds more.”

Gabriel stared into the cavern. Only one solution came to mind. “I hate to say it, but—”

“—we need to go in on foot,” Carly finished.

“Yeah.”

“Except—”

“—it will probably kill us.”

“Yeah.”

“Just a tiny little glitch there.”

“Very tiny.”

“I’ll stay with the Weavers,” Chris said, helpfully.

Carly and Gabriel glanced at him. Was he serious? They couldn’t really just walk into the chamber. They didn’t actually want to die. Chris took things too literally sometimes.

“Yeah…That’s not actually going to work,” Carly told him.

“How long are their stinger barbs, again?” Gabriel asked.

“Half an inch,” Chris answered.

“I have an idea.” Gabriel dug into his pack and unzipped the pouch containing his Simu Suit. When it sprang free, he fingered the foam, feeling its thickness.

About two inches.

“That might do,” he mumbled.

Gabriel slid off of Barrel, who snuffled nervously and tucked in his wings. The other two Weavers also folded their wings and stood perfectly still, in deference to the human now on the ground among them.

“What are you doing?” Carly demanded.

“Trust me,” Gabriel said, zipping himself into the suit. “I’ve got this.” His body was fully covered now, except for his fingers and face. He felt behind him to secure the place where his riding helmet met the back of the Simu Suit, protecting his neck. Then he tucked the ends of his sleeves into his fists and drew his fingers inside.

Carly’s eyes widened as she realized what he was planning to do. “Are you crazy?”

“Just crazy enough.” Gabriel grinned. “Wish me luck,” he called as he plunged headlong into the cavern.