flames reflected in his demonic eyes. Saint Dane laughed the whole while, as if enjoying it.
Mark and Courtney didn’t move, except to tremble.
The fire burned away all of Saint Dane’s hair, leaving him completely bald, with angry red streaks that looked like inflamed veins running from the back of his head to his forehead. His eyes had changed too. The steely blue color had gone nearly white.
He fixed those intense eyes on the two new acolytes and smiled. He tossed a dirty, cloth bag at their feet.
“A present for Pendragon,” Saint Dane hissed. “Be sure he gets it, won’t you?” Saint Dane took a step back into the light of the flume. “What was meant to be, is no longer,” he announced. With that, he began to transform. His body turned liquid as he leaned over to put his hands on the ground. At the same time his body mutated into that of a huge, jungle cat. It was the size of a lion. His coat was brown, but speckled with black spots. The big cat snarled at Mark and Courtney, and leaped into the flume. An instant later the light swept him up and disappeared into the depths. The music faded, the crystal walls returned to stone, and the light shrank to a pin spot.
But it didn’t disappear entirely.
Before Mark and Courtney could get their heads back together, the light began to grow again. The music became louder and the gray rock walls transformed back into crystal.
“My brain is exploding,” Mark uttered.
A second later the bright light flashed at the mouth of the tunnel to deposit another passenger before returning to its normal, dormant state.
“Bobby!” Mark and Courtney shouted. They ran to him and threw their arms around him in fear and relief.
“What happened?” Bobby demanded, all business.
Mark and Courtney were both supercharged with adrenaline. “It was Saint Dane!” Courtney shouted. “His hair burned! It was horrible!”
“He said the rules have ch-changed, Bobby,” Mark stuttered. “What did he m-mean?”
Bobby took a step back from them. Mark and Courtney sensed his tension.
“What did you do?” Bobby demanded. It sounded like he was scolding them.
“Do?” Courtney said. “We didn’t do anything!”
Mark and Courtney focused on Bobby. He was wearing rags. His feet were bare, his hair was a mess, and he had a coating of dirt all over his body. He didn’t smell so hot either.
“What happened to you?” Mark asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Bobby shot back. He was just as charged up as they were. “Did you activate the flume?”
Mark and Courtney looked to each other. Mark said, “Uh, I g-guess so. I said ‘Eelong’-“
“No!” Bobby said in anguish.
“What’s the matter?” Courtney asked. “We’re not Travelers. We can’t control the flume.”
“Things have changed,” Bobby shouted. “Saint Dane’s power is growing. He’s got his first territory. It’s all about changing the nature of things.”
“So… that means we can use the flumes?” Courtney asked.
“Don’t!” Bobby demanded. “It’ll just make things worse.”
Mark remembered something. He ran back to the door of the root cellar and picked up the bag Saint Dane had thrown at them. “He said this was for you,” Mark said, handing the bag to Bobby.
Bobby took it like it was the last thing in the world he wanted. He turned the rotten bag upside down, and something fell onto the floor. Courtney screamed. Mark took a step back in shock. Bobby stood firm, staring at the floor, his jaw muscles clenching. Lying at his feet was a human hand. It was large and dark skinned. As gruesome as this was, there was something else about it that made it nearly unbearable to look at. On one finger, was a Traveler ring.
“Gunny,” Bobby whispered. It was the severed hand of the Traveler from First Earth, Vincent “Gunny” VanDyke. Bobby took a brave breath, picked up the hand, and jammed it into the bag.
“Bobby, what’s happening?” Courtney asked.
“You’ll know when I send my journal,” he said. He turned back and ran into the mouth of the flume, clutching the bag with Gunny’s hand in it.”Eelong!”he called out. The flume sprang back to life.
“Is Gunny all right?” Mark asked, nearly in tears.
“He’s alive,” Bobby said. “But I don’t know for how long.”
“Tell us what to do!” Courtney pleaded.
“Nothing,” Bobby answered. “Wait for my journal. And whatever you do, donotactivate the flume. That’s exactly what Saint Dane wants. It’s not the way things were meant to be.”
With a final flash of light and jumble of notes, Bobby was swept into the flume, leaving his two friends alone to begin their careers as acolytes.
It wasn’t a very good beginning.
SECOND EARTH
Four months had passedsince that incredible, frightening episode in the basement of the Sherwood house.
Mark Dimond and Courtney Chetwynde had done exactly what Bobby told them to do. Nothing. They stayed away from the flume and waited for the arrival of another journal. They waited. And waited. And waited some more. Mark found himself staring at his ring, willing it to activate. He so desperately wanted a sign that being an acolyte meant more than sitting around like a load, pretending all was normal. A few times he called Tom Dorney to see if he had gotten any messages from other acolytes. Dorney’s answer was always the same: “Nope.” No detail. No chitchat. Just “Nope.” Dorney was a man of few words. To Mark, he was a man ofoneword. “Nope.”
Mark went to the safe-deposit box at the National Bank of Stony Brook, where Bobby’s journals were securely kept. He sat by himself for an entire day, reading them all, reliving the incredible journey that his best friend had been on for the last year and a half. So much had changed since that winter night when Bobby left Stony Brook with his uncle Press to discover that he was a Traveler, and that his destiny was to protect the territories of Halla.
The same night Bobby left, his family disappeared. Any record that they had ever existed disappeared right along with them. More importantly, the curtain was pulled back on the incredible truth that the universe didn’t function the way everyone thought. Bobby’s journals explained how every time, every place, every person and every thing that had ever existed, still did exist. It was called Halla. Halla was made up of ten territories that were connected by tunnels called flumes that only the Travelers could use. But the most frightening truth contained in the journals was that an evil Traveler named Saint Dane was doing his best to destroy Halla. Saint Dane would travel to a territory that was about to reach a critical point in its history, and do all that he could to push events the wrong way and send the territory into chaos. It was up to Bobby and the other Travelers to stop him. They had been pretty successful, too. Denduron, Cloral, First Earth-all victories over Saint Dane and his evil plots.
But then came Veelox.
Veelox was a territory doomed to crumble because people chose to live in Lifelight, the wonderful, virtual- reality world created by a supercomputer, instead of in real life. It marked Saint Dane’s first victory over Bobby and the Travelers. Mark worried that the toppling of Veelox meant Saint Dane had even more power than before. He worried that the rules had changed and that the demon would now be more difficult to defeat. He worried that the battle would soon come to Second Earth. He worried that this was the beginning of the end for Halla. Mark worried a lot. He was good at it.
And on top of it all, Mark and Courtney were now acolytes. Up to this point their job had been to read Bobby’s journals and keep them safe. Basically they had been librarians. Now they were in it. Being acolytes meant they would support any Travelers who came to Second Earth and help them blend in with the local culture. They were psyched and ready for the challenge. Finally, they had the chance to take an active role in helping Bobby.
But in spite of all these exciting and scary developments, it turned out that there was nothing for them to do. Mark felt like an anxious racehorse stuck in a gate that wouldn’t open. He’d walk through the halls of Davis Gregory
