Out of This World (8 page)

Jenna concentrated. “Maybe he meant it to be two words, not one. Air and Plane.
Lower the vehicle’s Air Plane
.”

“And a plane is a level in geometry. So he might have meant, ‘
Lower the vehicle’s air level’
.”

Jenna frowned. “But that still doesn’t help us.”

Zachary’s eyes widened. “Yes it does!” he said excitedly. “A car has two horizontal levels, or
planes
. One is its roof. We tried to lower that. But the other level . . . the other level is where the body of the car sits on its tires.
Its tires, Jen!
And tires are filled with air!
The Air Plane.
And we
can
lower that.”

“That has to be it!” said Jenna.

Wasting no more time they jumped from the car and rapidly let out most of the air from the tires. The car sank several inches, enough to allow them to move slowly forward under the low overpass. Moments later they were beyond it and driving ahead at full speed. The drive was less comfortable with a smashed roof and severely deflated tires, but that was the least of their worries.

Zachary glanced nervously at the watch once again and fought back panic. They had wasted considerable time getting beyond the overpass.

“Hirth told us that the passwords needed to enter the building,” he said, consulting the notepad, “
were
the four words you can make, without any rearrangements, from the letters that you find in there
.”

“So let me get this straight. We need to find letters inside this building and then make four words using them?”

“Right. And these four words will open the door.”

Jenna scratched her head. “But if we can’t open the door without the four words, how do we find the letters inside in the first place?”

“Good question. It’s like telling us the key to a locked building is
inside
the building. How does that help us?”

“Maybe the building’s made of glass,” said Jenna. “Maybe it’s just as see-through as the people. Then we’d be able to see the letters.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” said Zachary.

They rounded a corner and a building about the size of a small house came into view. Inside this distant building was the portal—their ticket off this bizarre world.

As they neared the building Zachary examined the fungus growing around his ankles once again. He was overcome by a momentary wave of nausea at the sight of it. It was now several inches thick and it had sprouted tiny buds: buds that would soon form vines to tether him to the ground.

They stopped the car right next to a large door at the front of the structure. Zachary’s heart fell as he realized Jenna’s guess had been wrong. The building was a perfect cube with no glass, no windows, and no way to see inside. So much for that theory. Now what?

They jumped out of the car and tried the large door, the building’s only entrance. It was solid steel and had to be at least a foot thick. It didn’t even budge.

Suddenly, the watch Hirth had given them started to beep loudly. The shrill tone, repeated over and over again, could only mean one thing—their time was up. Sure enough, small, green tendrils began slithering out from under their pant legs, growing snakelike toward the ground. They both gasped in horror. It was happening. Just as Hirth had said it would.

“
Climb on top of the car!
” yelled Zachary, grabbing the note pad and scampering on top of the roof. “
Hurry!
It’ll take the vines longer to reach the ground. At least it will buy us some more time.”

Jenna quickly joined him on the car’s roof as the vines continued their terrible growth downward. They had less than a minute to come up with the passwords.

And they were completely out of ideas.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Forest World

Zachary watched in horror from his position on top of the car as the rope-like fingers continued to grow eagerly downward from his ankles, hungrily searching for the ground. He reached down and tried to break one of the vines but it was incredibly strong and easily resisted his efforts.

Jenna had a sudden inspiration. “Any way to take what he told us more literally?” she said hurriedly.

“I don’t know. I’ll try,” said Zachary, scanning Hirth’s instructions once again. But he couldn’t concentrate. Not with the fungus snaking its way toward the ground.
He had to find a way to focus
. He shook his head vigorously, as if to clear it, and looked down at the pad.

The passwords to get into the building are
the four words you can make, without any rearrangements, from the letters that you find in there
.

From the letters that you find in there
. Don’t assume anything about meaning.
From the letters that you find in there
.
Concentrate
, he ordered himself.

Wait
. What if
there
didn’t refer to the building. He and Jenna had made that assumption. What if Hirth was just referring to the word, T-H-E-R-E. Were there four words that could be made, without rearranging any letters, from the letters found in the word THERE?

He glanced down. The tendrils were now just inches from the ground and closing quickly. He looked back at the pad. And he saw the four words.

THE
re, t
HERE
, t
HE
re, t
HER
e

He had it. The vines were just entering the ground. Was he too late?

“THE, HERE, HE, HER,” he shouted at the door.

There was a loud click and the door began to slowly open. Several tendrils had now reached the ground and were tunneling into the earth.

“You did it!” shouted Jenna excitedly. “How?”

“I’ll explain later. Get ready.”

The door had opened just enough for them to squeeze through. Their only hope now was that the portal was just inside the door rather than deep inside the building.

It was. Finally, some good luck.

The familiar visual distortion of the portal greeted their eyes less than a foot from the door. They gathered up the few tendrils that had begun to burrow into the ground and yanked as hard as they could. The tendrils held.

Zachary grabbed his sister's hand. “Dive for it!” he shouted, praying there was enough slack in the vines for them to make it through.

Together they dived off the car and through the door, aiming for the portal, screaming as they shot through the air. The slack in the vines around their ankles was quickly taken up as they flew. Would there be enough, or would the vine snap them back before they reached their goal?

“Ahhhhhhhh” they both yelled in one continuous scream, squeezing their eyes shut tightly.

And then they hit the portal, dead center—and at the same instant felt a backward jerk from the now taut vines. Had they made it through in time?

Jenna opened her eyes.

They were through.
They had done it
.

Although they had dived through the portal headfirst, they had somehow arrived comfortably on their feet as they had after entering the portal in their kitchen.

The fungus that had gone through with them was writhing rapidly and turning brown. Within seconds it stopped moving and fell from around their ankles.

“We did it!” shouted Jenna joyfully. They inspected themselves carefully for any trace of fungus or injury and found none.

Zachary nodded, letting out a long, thankful breath. “Did we ever,” he said. “Talk about close calls.”

They were standing in the middle of a lush forest filled with trees that made the largest trees on Earth look like miniatures. The massive trunks were as big around as houses and the trees reached hundreds of feet into the air, branching extensively.

The forest was mostly green, and if not for the sheer size and density of the trees, it might have passed for an exotic jungle on Earth. The many leaves formed a shady canopy, keeping the forest below shielded from the extreme brightness and heat of the sun, providing a cool, pleasant climate. The forest floor was thick with wild flowers of every color along with mushrooms, mosses, and lush grasses. The air was crisp and fresh and filled with the faint scent of flowers and other living things that,
while unlike anything they had smelled before, was quite pleasant.

“This is my kind of place,” said Zachary.

“Incredible,” whispered his sister in agreement.

Just seconds before they had been battling for their lives on top of a car in the middle of sprawling farmland and now—in the blink of an eye—they were standing in a lush forest on some other world, as if the transparent man’s world had never existed. These portals were going to take some getting used to.

Jenna looked at her brother quizzically. “But how’d you do it? How’d you figure out the passwords?”

Zachary told her. Her idea to take Hirth’s instructions literally had been the key.

“Great job,” she said in admiration. “Only next time,” she added playfully, “can you cut our escape a little closer? You know, just to make it more exciting. I mean, you probably could have waited at least another billionth of a second.”

Zachary laughed.

“I think we make a pretty good team,” said Jenna happily.

“We make a
great
team. I'm proud of us. I'm proud of
you
. You really came through, Jenna.”

His sister beamed.

That was better, thought Zachary. This time he had managed to give Jenna an actual compliment without also insulting her at the same time. If only he could do this when she was sobbing uncontrollably, he might be on to something.

“Unfortunately,” he said grimly, “not to rain on our parade or anything.” He could almost hear Hirth telling him that it
was not
raining and there was
no
parade. “But even though we feel like we conquered the universe, all we've really done is manage to stay alive for a single hour in here.
A single hour
.”

Jenna nodded. He was right. It was a sobering thought. Their mom and dad had been searching for a way home for
months
.

“And remember,” said Zachary as if reading her mind. “The path we’re now on is supposedly more dangerous than the one Mom and Dad took.”

“Zack, that's not raining on our parade. That's hitting our parade with a nuclear bomb.”

“Sorry. I just want to make sure we stay on guard.”

“Consider me on guard,” she said.

He was right, of course. But it sure was hard to believe this magnificent place was dangerous. Jenna rested against a thick branch of a tree whose trunk was thirty yards distant. Its branches, like the one on which Jenna leaned, started only a few feet off the ground and rose with the tree to a point higher than she could follow with her eyes. Thick vines hung down limply from the higher regions.

They tilted their heads back and gazed in awe at the magnificent world above them for several minutes. Zachary was so enthralled he was beginning to wonder if the danger of this place was that he would never want to leave it.

Finally, Jenna broke the long silence. “So . . . do we have a plan?”

Zachary shrugged. “Not really. I guess we just wander around until we either run into someone who can help us or we run into another portal.”

Jenna gritted her teeth. “So our plan is to get lucky?”

“Kind of. Mr. Ugly back on Orum said Mom and Dad were never on this world. It’s just a shortcut to get to them. So we should jump off as soon as we can.”

“How do we know we'll find a portal?”

“We don't. But Hirth was sure this would be a quicker way to get to Mom and Dad. So there must be a portal around here somewhere.”

“I sure hope you're . . .”

CRACK! The sound reverberated through the forest, interrupting her, followed by a muffled wail. It had come from the branches directly above them.

Startled, they looked up.

Fifty feet directly above, a strange, armored creature was hanging over them menacingly.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Terrible Grull

What in the world? Was this creature in an attacking position? Was it preparing to pounce?

After the first moment of surprise the pieces started to fall into place. It was an alien: judging from appearances, a boy, about the same age as Zachary. Not human, but human-like. The alien was covered with thick, gray, armored plates that were a part of his body, like an armadillo or turtle. His lower body and legs were massive, rippling with strength, and while the boy was only as tall as Jenna, he easily weighed three times as much.

And he was in big trouble.

The armored alien wasn't preparing to attack; he was about to fall out of the tree. He had been at the end of a branch that, thick as it was, had cracked under his weight. The end of the branch was now hanging straight down from the break point, still partially attached to the rest of the branch, and the alien was hugging it and hanging on for dear life. And he was slipping down, ever so slowly. Another five feet and he would slip off for good.

“
Hang on
,” shouted Zachary at the top of his lungs. “
We're coming to help you
.”

They began climbing as quickly as they could, but it still took them several minutes to reach the boy’s level in the tree. As they climbed the poor alien slipped several more feet and was grunting from the immense physical exertion.

“Hang on,” said Zachary again as he reached the boy’s level and took a quick survey. There were no branches that came closer to the struggling alien than fifteen yards, but he saw that he could swing from a vine, Tarzan-like, and reach him. Zachary grabbed a vine he thought would do the trick and yelled out, “I'm gonna swing over and try to land above you on the broken branch. Grab the vine and we can swing back together.”