for.
“The only chance we have is to sneak in there without them knowing,” I said. “The longer we can stay invisible, the better chance we have of getting Uncle Press out.”
Alder was getting excited. He said, “Yes! I know a way to get in. And I know every corridor of that fortress. There are passageways and tunnels that are rarely used.”
Loor didn’t like being told she was wrong, especially by someone she didn’t respect, which was me. But I think she was smart enough to know that my way made more sense.
She said, “And do you have a plan for what to do after Alder gets us into the palace?”
The fact is, I did. Sort of. It wasn’t really a plan as much as it was a bunch of ideas. Unfortunately all my ideas needed things that didn’t exist here on Denduron. I needed a bunch of stuff from back home.
“If I got a message to my friends back home,” I asked, “is there a way for them to send me something from there?”
Loor stepped away from me. She knew the answer, but I think she was reluctant to tell me. I was still pretty new to this whole Traveler thing. Maybe she wasn’t sure she could trust me with all the secrets yet.
But Alder didn’t have the same concerns. “Of course there is,” he said innocently. “You can flume back to your territory and get whatever you want.”
I was beginning to like this guy. Could it be as simple as that? All I had to do was go back to the flume and I could get home? Cool. But there was still the tricky issue of having to climb back to the top of that mountain to get to the gate. There’s no way I could do that in time to get home, then get back here to rescue Uncle Press before he was executed. Besides, I’d probably get eaten by those quigs anyway.
“That’s no good,” I said. “Is there another way?”
“You do not need to go to the mountain,” said Loor. “There is another gate in the mines that is not guarded by quigs.”
Oh, yeah! This was getting better by the second. And maybe best of all, by Loor giving me that piece of information, she was allowing herself to trust me. Maybe we could work together after all. Now that I was certain I could get home, my mind started to calculate all of the things I could get that would help us sneak into the fortress. The thing that was so cool is that the people of Denduron knew nothing about life at home. They would be blown away by something as simple as a flashlight. Man, talk about power! I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to work, but I was beginning to think that we might really have a chance of getting Uncle Press out of there.
Loor took me back down to the mine. It was an uneasy truce that we had going. We both knew we needed each other, but neither of us was too happy about it. The first thing I did was go back to the small cell-like room where Loor made me wait before, and finish my journal. I also wrote out the list of items and the instructions that I sent to you. Once they were ready, I rolled them up and did exactly what Osa had done when she sent you my first journal. I took off the ring, put it on the ground, touched the gray stone, and said, “Earth!”
But nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing. I was suddenly hit with a terrible thought. Osa told me that the power only worked for Travelers. What if I wasn’t really a Traveler? I was doing exactly what she did, but the ring didn’t work. Maybe I wasn’t a Traveler after all!
Loor had been watching from the doorway. Before my panic got any worse she said, “You are not from Earth. You are from Second Earth.”
Oh. Right. That’s what Osa said. Second Earth. Did that mean there was a First Earth? I made a mental note to ask that question later. There were more important duties at hand. I touched the stone and said, “Second Earth!” Sure enough, that was the ticket. The stone began to glow, the ring grew, the musical notes played, and I dropped the journal with my list into its center. It disappeared and all returned to normal. Cool. But then I was hit with another thought.
“Loor,” I asked. “How will I know when to flume back to Earth…uh…Second Earth? It could take a long time for my friends to get the stuff together.”
Loor gave me the straightest answer I’d had since my arrival. And she seemed unsure of herself, like it didn’t make sense to her, either.
“I do not fully understand how,” she began. “But when Travelers fly through the flumes, they will always arrive when they need to arrive.”
It was then that I realized that Loor didn’t know much more about being a Traveler than I did. Sure, she put on this tough front, but I think she was still trying to get her mind around the concept.
“My mother began to explain it to me,” she added. “She said the flumes travel through time as well as through space. But why a Traveler always arrives at the time they need to arrive was not made clear to me.”
“So you’re telling me that when I flume to Earth-”
“Second Earth,” she corrected.
“Yeah, whatever. When I flume to Second Earth I’ll arrive at the same time that my friends arrive at the other end?”
“Yes.”
“Does that work both ways? Forward and back?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if I left right now, would my friends be waiting for me already? Even though I just sent the list a minute ago?”
“I think so,” she answered.
“Then let’s go!”
Loor led me back into the large cavern and then into a tunnel on the far side. This was an ancient tunnel, more so than the others. There were some loose rocks scattered over the ore-car tracks, which told me there hadn’t been any miners through here in a long time. The walls also looked to be a bit rougher than the others, as if they hadn’t quite perfected their digging techniques when this tunnel was gouged out of the earth.
We had walked for quite a while when I asked, “How do you know we’re going the right way?”
Loor answered by raising up her hand. She was wearing a ring that was identical to mine. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. I guess when you’re in the Traveler Club, everybody gets the special ring. But the thing was, the gray stone was letting off a very slight glow.
“My mother showed me this gate a few days ago,” she explained. “She also showed me how to tell if a gate is nearby. The stone will tell you.”
Sure enough, I looked at my own ring and saw that the gray stone was starting to glow. Then as we rounded one more bend, I saw it. Embedded in the rock was a wooden door.
Several yards farther down the tunnel was another opening. There was a pile of stones in front of that, as if it had just recently been dug out. Beyond this opening was an old ore car on the tracks. The thing probably hadn’t been moved in decades.
“How do you know it’s this tunnel and not that one?” I asked.
Loor pointed to the wooden door. There was a star symbol carved in it, just like the door in the subway back in the Bronx. We walked inside and I saw the familiar tunnel that led to nowhere and everywhere. I took a few steps toward it and then turned back to Loor.
“What do I do?” I asked.
“I think you know,” she answered.
Yeah, I did. I walked a few steps farther into the mouth of the tunnel when Loor called to me, “Pendragon?” I turned back and she said, “Your uncle is a good man. I want to rescue him too.”
I thought that was pretty cool. I nodded to her, then turned to face the darkness and said, “Second Earth!”
You know what happened next.
Journal #3 (continued)
Denduron
Ididn’t want to leave you guys. When I took the flume back to that subway station, my thoughts were all about Uncle Press and the mission ahead. But once I got there and saw you both, I remembered how much I
