‘How far away do you think we are?’ Pod asked Annalie.
‘It’s difficult to tell,’ Annalie admitted. ‘We’re on the right heading. But I don’t know how much further we’ve got to go.’
‘Is it a day? Two days?’
Annalie shrugged helplessly.
An hour passed. Will was still working on the surfer.
‘I’m thirsty,’ Blossom said.
‘We’re all thirsty,’ Pod said. ‘We have to preserve our water.’
‘Maybe we should all have a sip,’ Essie said.
‘I’m thirstier than that,’ Blossom said.
‘No kidding,’ Will snarled from underneath an axle.
Trying to help, Essie turned to Annalie. ‘Could we try and make a solar still, like we did back on the island?’
‘We didn’t bring any plastic,’ Annalie said, ‘and the air and the ground are so dry I don’t think we’d get any water anyway. Let’s see exactly how much water we’ve got.’
They had four full water bottles, each of them holding about a litre of water. There were five of them plus Graham; the water wouldn’t last for long in this fierce heat. Annalie carefully poured water out for each of them and they drank, savouring it as much as they could, wishing they could have more.
Another hour passed. Eventually, Will said, ‘Okay, I might have fixed it.’
He put the sail back on the surfer and they all climbed aboard. They sailed on bumpily. As the sun moved to the west, a wind came up and began to blow steadily. They started to make better time, although the wheels felt jerkier than before. They came to a rocky, eroded part of the country, and then, quite suddenly, Will swung the sail and brought them to an abrupt halt that threw Pod right out of the surfer.
‘Careful,’ he said grumpily, picking grit out of his palms. Then he looked up and realised why Will had stopped them so abruptly.
They had arrived at a canyon. It was wide—perhaps several hundred metres across—and stretched out across their paths in both directions, a great rift across the middle of the desert.
‘This was not on the map,’ Essie said.
They crept to the edge and looked down. The inside of the canyon was not a cliff: it was sloping and steep, but not vertical, made of huge rocks and patches of gritty sand and gravel. It was very deep—so deep they could not see the bottom clearly.
‘So now what?’ said Will.
‘Do we try and go round it?’ Essie suggested.
‘It looks like it goes for miles,’ Annalie said. ‘Are you sure it’s not on the map?’
Essie checked her shell, and shook her head.
‘Weird,’ Annalie said. ‘So we’ve got no idea how big this thing is or how far it goes.’
‘We could end up going miles out of our way if we try to go around it,’ Will said.
‘So, what? Are we going to climb down it?’ Pod asked, looking uneasily at the drop.
‘I don’t think we’ve got a choice,’ Will said.
‘I can’t climb down there,’ Blossom said decisively.
‘It’s not climbing,’ Will said. ‘It’s just very careful walking. You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.’
‘What happens when we get to the other side?’ Essie asked. ‘Without the land surfer, we’ll be walking the rest of the way.’
The heat shivered over them. No one liked the sound of this very much.
Will looked down at the canyon, chewing his lip, then looked at the surfer. ‘We’ll take it with us,’ he said.
‘That’s impossible!’ Annalie said.
The land surfer could of course be broken down into components—that was how they’d brought it to shore—but they were big and unwieldy. To climb down the canyon and then climb up the other side, they would need to use both hands and all their strength.
‘No it’s not,’ Will said. ‘I’ll take the sail, that’s the heaviest part. The rest of you can take the other bits. We’ll divide it up, it won’t be that hard. Come on—we’ve got hardly any water. Do you really want to spend the next two days walking through this?’
They were all silent for a moment, looking at each other. Then Pod said, ‘Let’s take this thing apart then.’
‘We’re doing this? Really?’ Blossom said.
‘We can’t stay here,’ Pod sighed.
Will set to work pulling his land surfer apart, then he used what little rope they had to tie the biggest pieces onto his, Pod’s and Annalie’s backs. Essie took one of the backpacks, loaded up with the remaining bits and pieces of the land surfer, while Blossom was given the other, filled with food and water.
‘Okay,’ Will said, when everybody was fully loaded. ‘Let’s do this.’
He led the way, picking a path through the rocks and down into the canyon. They discovered very quickly that the ground between the rocks was treacherous—the surface was loose and slipped easily. ‘It’s safer if you climb down over the rocks,’ Will called, after his feet nearly went out from under him for the second time. He picked his way cautiously down; Will was sure-footed and would have had no trouble descending ordinarily, but the big sail on his back kept catching on things, startling him, and it was so heavy it threw his balance off so he was constantly in fear he was going to fall.
They inched their way down, Annalie following Will, Essie behind them, and Pod in the rear with Blossom. Blossom had no special aptitude for climbing and kept having to be told where to put her hands and feet. It made for slow going. Pod, weighed down by the land surfer’s heavy axles, grew more and more tired.
They were almost two-thirds of the way to the bottom when Essie’s feet went out from under her. She squealed and skidded and loose rocks began to cascade down over Annalie and Will, who were downhill from her. She managed to catch herself in time, but her sudden cry had spooked everyone else; Blossom lost her grip on the rock she
