Dash stared at the Cloud Leopard’s communication console, wondering if he should run another diagnostic on the equipment. Things had been quiet for way too long. “Come on. Doesn’t it seem weird that they haven’t checked in even once yet?” he asked aloud. “At least to say ‘all’s good’ before they went underground?”

Piper hovered in her air chair nearby. “Mm-hmm,” she answered, distracted.

“Weird, unusual, out of the ordinary? Yes sir!” STEAM piped up from the other side of the room.

Dash glanced at the small robot, who was ever eager to please. “Thanks, buddy,” he said. “But I was talking to Piper.”

“Hmm?” Piper said again.

She had been studying her tablet intently for over an hour. Her free hand idly stroked the top of Rocket’s head. He sat alongside her chair, his chin resting on her knee.

“How can you just sit there and read?” Dash blurted out. He resumed his restless pacing, glaring at Piper.

Piper looked up from her tablet. “I’m worried about them too,” she said softly. “Reading helps keep my mind off it.”

Maybe Piper was right. He needed a distraction too. “What are you reading?” Dash asked, trying to remain calm. Conversation might help keep his mind from drifting.

“I’m doing some research on the Stinger spores,” she said. “They are pretty intensely bad. But really fascinating.”

“It talks about them in your medical journals?”

Piper shook her head. “Chris gave me a report written by the Jackals. They’ve spent decades examining the spores inside and out. Chemical breakdowns, physical properties, potency of the primary toxin.”

“Wow.” Dash was happy Piper was the ship’s medic, not him. It didn’t sound like his idea of pleasure reading, but she was grinning enthusiastically.

“Their research methodology is extremely meticulous,” Piper said. “They leave no stone unturned, you know?”

Dash wasn’t sure he knew, but he nodded. He had a sudden flashback to fifth-grade science class and his experiment on batteries. He had just had a conversation with Carly about how awesome but weird it was to be missing a whole year of school during this mission. Everyone on the crew felt like they were still learning a lot, even though they hadn’t set foot in a classroom in months.

“Are you going to start running more experiments yourself?” Dash asked with trepidation. Piper seemed to enjoy the activities in the science textbooks they had on board.

“Oh, yeah,” Piper said, excited. “As soon as we leave Infinity.”

There was always plenty of time while they were in Gamma speed for her to study. She grinned at the good-natured skepticism on Dash’s face. “I just read some articles about blood typing. It sounds really fun. Will you mind if I draw some blood from you? I mean, more than usual, for the med checks? There’s a kit down in my—”

The communications console lit up suddenly. “Cloud Leopard, this is the Light Blade.” The landscape on the display screen disappeared, and Colin appeared, looking haggard.

Or, at least, as haggard as an emotionless evil alien clone can look.

Rocket barked twice. It sounded like a warning.

Piper moved closer to Dash as he turned to face the screen. It was always a bit startling to see Chris’s face reproduced on Colin. The glasses made a difference, but not quite enough to stop the double take.

“Dash, we’ve got an emergency.” Colin’s cheeks looked slightly flushed. His breath came out in panting jerks. “It’s Anna—I don’t know what to do. The ladder just slipped, and—”

“Whoa, wait.” Dash held up his hands to stop Colin’s breathless tirade. “What happened?”

Colin took a deep breath. “Anna has fallen from a great height,” he said, resuming his normal, almost robotic tone. “She does not move, does not answer.”

“Oh no,” Dash said. His pulse sped up. An accident in space—he had been fearing this for his own crew. If Anna was seriously hurt, what would it mean for the mission?

Piper zoomed forward in her air chair. “Is she breathing?”

“I do not know,” Colin said. “But I fear she is significantly injured.”

“Is she bleeding?” Dash asked. “How far was the fall?”

“She hit her head on the way down,” Colin said. He paused. “I’ll go get her body and bring it here so you can see.”

Body? Dash thought. That sounded terrible.

“No! Don’t move her,” Piper told Colin. “Moving her could hurt her more.”

“What should I do? Can you help, please?” Colin begged. He looked shocked, motionless.

“I’ll go,” Piper said. “I’m the medic.”

Rocket barked two more times.

“Shh,” Piper soothed him. “It’s okay, boy.”

“The Cloud Cat is down on Infinity,” Dash said. “We couldn’t go even if we wanted to.”

“I don’t need a landing craft to fly, remember?” Piper zipped toward the cargo door. “I’ll get my medical kit.”

“We’re still in orbit,” Dash reminded her. “You’ll need booster rockets on your chair.”

“And a space suit, I know,” Piper called over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you in the engine room.”

Dash knew Piper was right. Helping out the Omega crew was the right thing to do. So why couldn’t he shake this bad feeling?

He zipped through the tubes to the engine room. Rocket bounded in from the corridor and barked twice, nudging Dash’s knee. STEAM waddled in moments later and found Dash studying the collection of rockets, various spare parts for the Cloud Cat and the other smaller crafts.

“What about a couple of these?” he asked STEAM, pointing to a set of four rocket canisters for the landing craft. Each was the size and shape of a toddler’s Wiffle bat.

“Will they burn long enough to get her to the other ship?”

STEAM’s database whirred, calculating speed, distance, trajectory, atmospheric density, the weight of Piper in her chair. “All four together will do the trick, yes sir,” he reported.

Piper floated in, wearing a space suit. The round plastic helmet rested in her lap, atop her medical kit.

“Are you sure about this?” Dash asked.

“Of course,” Piper said, clipping her helmet into place.

Dash lashed the booster rockets by their necks to the sides of Piper’s air chair, while STEAM attached an oxygen canister to the back and connected it to her helmet hose. Since her head was now sealed inside the bubble, Piper gave a thumbs-up.

Dash drew back into the safety of the ship, leaving Piper alone to launch from the engine room. He watched on the screen from the flight deck as she punched the door release and the cargo door eased open. The rockets fired, and Piper’s air chair carried her into the white sky. The door closed behind her.

For a while, she was a large dot on the console screen, then a small dot, then she faded from view.

Rocket darted in a close circle around Dash’s legs, before parking himself on Dash’s right foot. He looked up with large, sad eyes, the tip of his tongue out. Dash let his fingers glide through the golden retriever’s fur. Rocket seemed worried too.

“What are the odds she makes it back all right?” Dash wondered aloud.

Across the flight console, STEAM 6000 began beeping and whirring. “Incalculable,” the little robot answered. “Too many variables unknown, yes sir.”

“She’ll be fine,” Dash assured him. “Piper can take care of herself. It was a rhetorical question.”

“Hmm,” said STEAM. “Very well, then.”

—

Miles below, down in the depths of Infinity, Gabriel sumo-stomped his way into the lake cavern. The beefy Simu Suit made it hard to move quickly.

“Come and get me,” he shouted.

He didn’t need to say anything. The Stingers instantly responded to the motion of the intruding creature. They dove at him in swarms.

Gabriel held his padded arms up like a shield over his face. He waddled forward down the embankment until he heard his boots splash in the water.

Through the Simu Suit, he felt the Stinger wing beats slapping lightly against him. Everywhere. Some of them were getting downright personal.

“Yaaah, they are getting all up in my grill!” Gabriel fought the instinct to slap them away. He had to keep his face covered. Luckily, he wasn’t feeling anything sharp.

“This is crazy,” Chris muttered from the edge of the tunnel.

“Crazy brilliant,” Carly amended. “Come on, let’s help him out.”

She nudged Thunder into flight. Chris and Knight followed. They swooped through the cavern from opposite directions, using the Weavers’ wind to drive more and more Stingers toward Gabriel.

Carly looked down from above and found that she could barely see Gabriel. The thick cloud of Stingers engulfed him.

Gabriel was noticing the same issue himself. An issue that was quickly becoming a full-fledged problem!

The Stingers thumped and jostled him.

Gabriel struggled to stay on his feet. His arms and legs were suddenly heavy. Too heavy to move. Too heavy to stay upright.

He fell to his knees. Water soaked into his Simu Suit, weighing him down further.

His arms, so heavy now, dragged him forward. Toward the water. He had no choice but to let his head and shoulders follow them. Otherwise, his face would be exposed. He’d be stung to death in seconds.

No! He could drown!

Almost too late, he realized the danger he was in.

He twisted his body to the right. It took all his effort. He landed on his elbows in the pebbly muck. The lake lapped against his cheek. He gasped for breath in the wake of each wave.

Stingers still pounded him from above. Relentlessly.

They were making sounds, he realized. Amid the lull of the lake and the voices of his friends above, he could hear them.

The Stingers emitted a low melody, barely audible. Like singing. It was eerie, and soft, like catching a hint of music floating from a very distant room.

It was a lovely sound. More lovely by the moment. He could relax now, he thought, and just listen….

“Gabriel!” Carly’s shout from above drowned out the tiny, pleasant voices.

His mind snapped back into focus.

Stingers…not singers!

They would kill him eventually.

Probably sooner than “eventually.”

Terror sliced through him. He tried to move, but he couldn’t. There was too much weight upon him.

He had made a huge mistake.

Carly and Chris soared overhead. Carly craned her neck. Gabriel’s form had gotten smaller, it seemed. She flew closer and saw him crumpled in the shallow water.

“He’s trapped!” Carly cried.

The weight of the Simu Suit, plus the Stinger pellets, plus the pull of extra gravity on Infinity…Gabriel was completely stuck in place!

“We have to pull him out,” Carly shouted. His arms, in the padding, were still covering his exposed face, but who knew how long he had before a Stinger barb found its way between the cracks.

Chris wheeled Knight around. “I’ll stave them off,” he called. “You help Gabriel.” With that, he nudged the Weaver’s haunches and swooped downward. The wind stirred the Stinger cloud. The batlike beings spiraled upward.

Carly landed and dismounted. She raced on foot into the chamber.

The Stingers swirled toward her en masse, but Chris rode through ahead of her and Knight’s wing blasts drove them back. It seemed like he was finally starting to grasp the concept of teamwork.

Carly grabbed Gabriel by the shoulders of his Simu Suit. Her fingers squeezed into the foam and water ran out. The suit felt knobbly, studded with Stinger pellets.

She hoped that they couldn’t poison her through her skin. The spores had to be injected to cause damage, right?

She had no choice. The Stinger cloud shifted, poised to return.

Carly dug her fists into the Simu Suit.

“Up on three,” she shouted. “One…two…three!” She hauled Gabriel to his feet.

Gabriel put all his effort into standing upright, but the lopsided weight of the Simu Suit dragged him back down. He flopped onto his stomach.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Carly yelled. “Come on.”

Gabriel’s feet skidded against the moss. There was no way he could stand.

Carly clutched his padded shoulders and tugged. She backed her way steadily out of the chamber, dragging him along.

Chris circled above and kept the nearby air free of Stingers.

“Okay, now stop squirming,” Carly grunted at Gabriel. “I think you’re making it worse.”

She used all her strength to drag him inch by inch along the slick mossy pebbles of the lake shore. “Didn’t…exactly…think…this…plan…all…the…way…through…eh?” She eked out one word per breath as she tugged him up the embankment.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gabriel muttered. His voice was muffled by the edge of the Simu Suit.

“Clear!” Carly shouted to Chris as she successfully drew Gabriel across the threshold of the tunnel. She unzipped his waterlogged suit and helped him climb out.

When he was free, Carly clapped Gabriel on the back. “Always knew you were nuts,” she commented.

“Crazy is the new awesome.” He did a funky little dance. “Can’t touch this.”

“Touched…in the head,” Carly muttered, grinning good-naturedly.

Chris landed his Weaver on the bank and dismounted.

Gabriel helped Carly pull the Simu Suit farther into the tunnel. It was heavy, even without him inside. The Stinger pellets must’ve each weighed a ton.

“How do they fly with these things in their butts?” Gabriel wondered.

Carly laughed. “Do you think we got enough?” she asked, turning serious.

“Sure feels like it. And I can’t believe you had to drag me out of there,” Gabriel said, slightly chagrined.

Carly smiled again. “It’ll be our secret.”

“No chance,” Gabriel answered. “That was way too awesome. I’m telling everyone!”

They laughed together, as they plucked Stinger pellets from the suit with tweezers and pliers from Carly’s toolkit. They plopped them one by one into the jar, counting carefully as they worked. Hopefully Gabriel’s crazy trick meant they had gathered enough—but it was much better to find out now than back on the ship.

The Weavers, who had been standing at perfect attention, suddenly whinnied and shuffled their hooves. Thunder looked over his shoulder, shining his eyes into the tunnel.

Chris stood up and darted into the tunnel. “We gotta go,” he said when he returned a moment later. His chest tag pinged.

“But the spores,” Gabriel said. They were still tweezing and counting. They hadn’t even finished the arms.

“We’re only at two hundred fifty,” Carly said.

There was no way to refold the suit all the way with the spores inside.

“Squeeze the water out, and get it on the horse,” Chris said. “We’ve got a Saw coming.”