The Dark Planet

  stay safe and cozy all the time. He'll come back. He always

  does."

  Isabel stewed a little more. Samuel looked in every direction to

  be sure they were alone by the water's edge. Satisfied, he lifted

  the tablet from where it had been placed between the rocks.

  "What do you think it is?" asked Isabel.

  "It's two-sided," said Samuel, trying to pry the two halves apart

  with his fingernails. "And they come apart, or at least I think they

  do. Maybe there's something hidden inside."

  "Here, let me see it," said Isabel. Samuel reluctantly handed it

  to her. Isabel gave it a brief glance, then held it over her head

  so she could smash it against the rocks.

  "What are you doing!" cried Samuel, reaching up to take it from

  her. "We have to be careful with it. There's a lot that needs to be

  read on there."

  "Here, you can have it," she said, pushing the tablet into

  Samuel's hands and beginning to walk away all in one fluid

  motion. She felt he was punishing her for not knowing how to

  read better.

  "Wait--Isabel, please. I didn't mean anything by it. Let's look at it

  together and see what we can figure out."

  Isabel ignored him. Neither Edgar nor Samuel seemed to

  understand how a friend was supposed to act.

  "Come on, Isabel. I said I was sorry. I need your help on this. I

  can't do it alone."

  Isabel stopped but didn't turn around right away. She took out

  her sling, set a dried fig inside, and began swinging it over her

  head. Fwoosh, fwoosh, fwoosh--faster and faster it went until

  snap! she let it fly out over the water. Samuel watched until it

  went so far he almost lost sight of it, a tiny black speck against a

  deep blue sea of water. The effort made Isabel feel better.

  "Let me see it again," she said, turning. She would leave if he

  wouldn't trust her with the tablet.

  Samuel hesitated before holding it out toward her. When Isabel

  took it she ran her fingers over the letters that covered one side.

  She could feel them, etched as they were, and it was a new

  sensation she liked. Like Edgar before her, she quickly figured

  out the second word at the top. A-T-H-E-R-T-O-N. "Atherton!

  That's what it says," she said proudly.

  "You're right," said Samuel. "Let me have a look."

  She held it out.

  "And that other word, I think you know that one as well." Isabel

  wrinkled her brow so it fell low over her eyelashes. Her long

  black hair fell over the sides of her face as she concentrated on

  the letters. First, she said something that sounded like in-sid,

  but right after, without any help, she changed her mind.

  "Inside--inside Atherton!" cried Isabel. But then she realized

  what she'd read. Samuel saw that she was shaking, a look of

  terror on her face he'd only seen once before.

  "It's all right, Isabel. Don't think about it."

  Isabel handed the tablet back to Samuel and turned away. The

  inside of Atherton held the Inferno, which had almost killed

  Isabel not that long ago.

  "It's just a tablet, Isabel. We don't have to do anything with it."

  Deep down there was nothing Samuel wanted more than to

  read the tablet top to bottom, to absorb every single word and

  number. It fascinated him beyond all reason.

  "I think we should set it on fire," said Isabel. "Whatever it says

  can only bring trouble."

  "We can't do that. And I don't think we should just give it to Dr.

  Kincaid. There must be a reason Edgar wanted us to have it."

  "I still say we should get rid of it," said Isabel. "We can't do that!

  What if there's something important here? This is the work of Dr.

  Harding--that's obvious. We can't just destroy it, Isabel."

  "Then you read it. I don't want to read any more."

  Samuel was secretly glad Isabel didn't want to read the tablet.

  He offered to let her sit by the water's edge while he gave the

  tablet a good long look.

  After what seemed like hours to Isabel but was actually only a

  little over thirty minutes, Samuel set the tablet aside in the

  rocks. He moved over next to Isabel and the two gazed out over

  open water.

  "I don't want you to overreact," said Samuel, "but there are

  some things you need to know."

  Isabel squeezed the hard, black fig in her hand, trying to stay

  calm.

  "Promise me we're not going back through the Inferno," she

  said. If Samuel could guarantee that this message didn't lead to

  a river of fire with firebugs and cave eels, she was willing to at

  least listen.

  He smiled the smile of someone who knows something special

  and is dying to share it. "I promise," he said. He saw Isabel nod

  ever so slightly, and taking the cue, he began pointing to

  different parts of the tablet.

  "There are a lot of numbers, mostly in sets of five, so they must

  have unlocked some part of Dr. Harding's brain. You remember

  when we were inside his laboratory before, how there were so

  many five-digit numbers, and how he used them to lock things

  away in his mind? Well, I think the ones on this tablet must be

  important. He obviously carried this around with him in the

  absence of journals. These numbers are burned in. They're

  permanent."

  Isabel became more interested in the tablet and pointed to a

  group of words trapped inside a circle. "What's that say?"

  Samuel recited the words he'd already read and thought about.

  "Birth of the Nubian, the making of the Inferno, the fall of

  Atherton, the flood, an altered state of Cleaners, the chill of

  winter."

  "That sounds--I don't know, it sounds like a list of some kind,"

  said Isabel.

  "Maybe it's a list of things that are going to happen. If that's what

  this refers to, then the list appears to be in order, or at least it

  could be. Maybe the Nubian came first, at the beginning--you

  remember those?"

  How could Isabel forget the giant winged creatures inside

  Atherton, the way they had tucked their wings and dove, their

  glistening black beaks as sharp as arrows aimed at her and her

  friends?

  "Then came the making of the Inferno," said Isabel. "The fall of

  Atherton and the altered state of Cleaners--those have both

  happened," he said.

  "That only leaves the last one," said Isabel, looking at the words

  and trying to remember what Samuel had said. "The... chill of

  winter, right?"

  "That's the strangest of them all," said Samuel. He looked at

  Isabel. "Do you know what winter is?"

  She did not, because there had never been anything like winter

  on Atherton.

  "Some of the books I used to read in the Highlands talked about

  winter. It's a time when every thing turns very cold and --"

  "And what?" asked Isabel. She pierced right through Samuel

  with those brilliant dark eyes of hers. It was impossible for him

  to keep secrets from her. He couldn't figure out how Edgar had

  done it.

  "In the time of winter every thing dies," said Samuel. "When you

&n
bsp; say every thing, you mean every thing?"

  Samuel didn't know how to respond. He hadn't ever had any

  real experience with winter, so he didn't really understand it.

  "I don't know for sure. But there's something else about winter,

  and it might be more important given what these words say.

  Winter is really cold."

  "And you know what else is really interesting?" said Isabel.

  "The chill of winter is the last thing on the list. What do you

  suppose that means?"

  "It means we're coming to the end of one thing and the

  beginning of another. This is really important."

  "I wish we could show it to Dr. Kincaid."

  Samuel and Isabel trusted Edgar more than anyone else. Until

  their friend returned, the tablet was theirs to protect. They

  weren't sure exactly why, but they couldn't share it with Dr.

  Kincaid or anyone else just yet.

  "There are all sorts of things on this tablet. I haven't even begun

  to understand it all. The other side is full of things that are

  completely beyond me. The Silo, Station Seven, Spikers, the

  lost garden--it's all so confusing. And then there's this."

  Samuel pointed to the left corner of the tablet, where he saw a

  collection of lines and markings and words almost too tiny to

  read.

  "What is it?" asked Isabel.

  "It's the key to Mulciber," said Samuel, reading some of the

  words. Seeing Isabel still didn't quite understand, he spoke

  more directly, pointing to a long word of eight letters.

  "That word right there--THEYARDS--that's the word, Isabel. It

  will open the yellow door."

  The yellow door. They'd long wanted to open it but had never

  known how. The eight-letter combination had been kept from

  them by Dr. Kincaid and Vincent.

  "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Isabel.

  Samuel just smiled. They had the key to Mulciber! They could

  actually get back inside Atherton.

  "We could just take a quick look around," said Isabel. "We don't

  have to go very far, right?"

  "Absolutely!"

  Samuel loved the idea of adventure almost as much as Edgar

  did, and going back inside Atherton was the most adventurous

  thing he could think of.

  "You see there? That's the Inferno," said Samuel, pointing

  down a path on the map so delicately burned into wood. "But

  this map leads in the opposite direction."

  Isabel could see that he was right.

  "But where does it lead to? And why would we go back in

  there?"

  She secretly loved the idea of having an adventure of her own

  to tell Edgar about when he got back and was beginning to

  hope it would work. There was something very appealing about

  taking up this challenge while their closest friend was on a

  faraway quest of his own.

  "It leads here," said Samuel. His finger followed the jagged path

  of a burned line. It went every which way, rising and falling,

  passing words and markings. Near the end, the markings

  increased and took on the form of something Samuel had read

  about in books.

  "I think those are snowflakes," he said. Isabel crinkled her nose

  and leaned in closer. She'd heard of snow but had no memory

  of having ever seen it or felt it.

  At the very end was a set of four words Isabel had seen only a

  moment ago.

  "'The chill of winter,'" she whispered.

  "There's a secret hidden inside Atherton that no one else knows

  about. Not even Edgar. Maybe not even Dr. Kincaid."

  "We'll just have a look, that's all," said Isabel. "We can always

  turn back and get help if we need it, can't we?"

  The two smiled at each other and nodded.

  "Of course we can," said Samuel. But he had no intention of

  turning back. His mind was aflame with curiosity. He wanted the

  chill of winter to be his discovery whether Isabel went along or

  not.

  CHAPTER 12SPIKERS

  Edgar didn't have to walk very far before realizing he'd made a

  terrible mistake. The smog of the Dark Planet swirled on a sea

  breeze, and the sound of giant, pounding feet came from behind

  him. As Edgar turned in a circle, every direction looked exactly

  the same. Grey tree trunks, sick with disease, rose all around

  him. Here the world was colorless in the extreme, a deep

  monotone fog pervading every thing. And he was having

  trouble breathing.

  Edgar had made the catastrophic error of walking away from the

  safety of the Raven without leaving himself a trail to follow back.

  He couldn't have imagined how quickly the vessel would

  dissolve away in the haze.

  I'm lost, he thought, coughing into his arm as quietly as he

  could. Something was tracking him as he moved.

  The sound of approaching creatures was coming from more

  than one direction now, but in the soupy smog Edgar couldn't

  say for sure where the first attack would come from.

  Time to climb, he thought. The idea of climbing calmed him

  down at first, but when he dug his fingers into the tree trunk in

  front of him, he had an unpleasant surprise: Things he'd never

  seen before began crawling out of the rotting wood. They were

  the color of dirt and decay, a shade above monochrome. It took

  all of Edgar's will to hold back a scream as he released the

  trunk and shook his hands.

  The sound of pounding was coming from three directions now-or was it four?--and Edgar spun around. When he faced the tree

  trunk again he knew he had run completely out of options.

  Whatever was after him had arrived.

  Don't think, just move! Move! thought Edgar. He took hold of the

  tree trunk and climbed fast and furious into the smog above.

  The bugs were long and many legged with slippery shells that

  twisted and turned like a snake. As they emerged from the

  rotting tree trunk with startling speed, one of them crawled over

  Edgar's hand. He froze, holding his breath and expecting to be

  pierced or pinched with unseen claws. But it only left a slimy

  path on the back of his hand as it passed over.

  While Edgar looked at the bug crawling away he felt another

  moving up his arm and heading for his armpit. Edgar held on

  with his other arm and shook it free, watching it twist and spin

  toward the ground in the open air.

  This must be what the Cleaners are eating out here, thought

  Edgar.

  He'd only climbed six or seven feet up the side of a dead tree

  but already the ground was invisible below. Looking up, Edgar

  saw that things were a little bit brighter, and so he quickly

  scaled another ten feet, flicking creepy crawlies as he went.

  Now he could see the tops of the stand of trees in every

  direction, a sea of weather-beaten spikes emerging from a

  boiling cauldron.

  He was startled by the sensation of a slimy creature that had

  made its way under his shirt and around to his back. "Get off

  me!" he cried.

  He realized right away that he'd spoken too loudly, because the

  sound of giant steps from below came quickly to a stop. All was

  quiet in the forsak
en wood and Edgar knew something had

  heard him. He thought he heard sniffing from twenty feet below,

  but he couldn't be sure.

  Without warning, there was a loud chopping sound from below

  and the tree in which Edgar was perched was cut free at the

  bottom with one swipe. As it toppled, Edgar had no choice but

  to jump. He slammed flat into another trunk, smashing his face

  hard and nearly bouncing free into the air. Another loud thwack!

  and a second tree toppled over to his left.

  He climbed higher still where the air became brighter, and then

  Edgar began leaping from trunk to trunk, making his way across

  the forsaken wood as trees fell behind him. Looking back, he

  saw the shadows of something from below that looked like a

  giant hammer rising and crashing into the earth.

  Edgar jumped three more trees away and then stopped,

  clearing all the crawling bugs from his arms. A second bug had

  traveled all the way to Edgar's head and made a nest of his

  floppy hair. He was trying to disentangle its squirming four-inch

  body with shaking fingers when he heard a sound he knew all

  too well.

  Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! The sound of breaking

  bones.

  "Cleaners," whispered Edgar.

  The clanging of thousands of bony legs rushed beneath him.

  He could see the shadows of Cleaners shooting past in a herd

  toward the falling trees.

  I've never seen ones that big, Edgar thought in awe. He could

  only make out their shadows, but it appeared these Cleaners

  were two or three times bigger than any that had lived on

  Atherton.

  They must be thirty feet long or more! he thought. Two bites and

  Cleaners this big could remove every trace of Edgar from the

  Dark Planet.

  Edgar had to leap with all his strength in order to get across the

  gap between dead trees--maybe ten or eleven feet--each time

  grabbing a lower hold on the next trunk, forcing him to climb

  back up again. At each landing the bugs would churn out as if

  trying to escape an approaching menace. But Edgar scrambled

  on, just ahead of the falling trees behind him.

  All at once, there was a commotion like nothing Edgar had ever

  heard before. It reminded him of the sound of crashing cliffs on

  Atherton. The earth shook and trees snapped. A fight between

  monsters was on.

  Edgar heard the screaming and ripping and biting. He could

  see the shadows moving like awful puppets in a violent show of