Страница 31 из 41
56
I’VE HOT-WIRED quite a few cars and driven all kinds of weird vehicles, like a school bus and a tank. Here are a couple of tips: school buses do not corner well, and tanks smell like old gym socks. I’d never stolen a Triton, but I had watched the crewman steer it around, and I thought I could do it. No one even tried to stop Gazzy and me as we raced back down the corridor and entered the pressure chamber.
The Triton was sitting there waiting for us.
“So cool!” Gazzy said. “Did you jack a key?”
I gri
Gazzy took his metal box and put it on the floor right next to one of the Triton’s arms, then we scrambled up to the dome and opened the hatch. We dropped down into the seats, and I started flicking switches, hoping I was doing it in the right order. I’d only seen it done once. Gazzy sealed the hatch, and all the panels lit up inside. He looked thrilled, but I wasn’t any happier about this than I was the first time.
Then it hit me, amid all the flashing lights and alarms and the banging sounds that were getting louder: a realization that made my blood run cold and my hand freeze into a claw on the single joystick that operated the sub.
I was locked in a very small airtight container… with the Gasman.
I’m not huge with religion, but right then I started praying to every deity I’d ever heard of. Please do not let Gazzy have one of his episodes in here. Please.
The Voice suddenly chimed in: Get a move on, Max.
Right, right. Inside the sub, I grabbed the remote that would open the chamber doors, dropping us out into the ocean.
“Gaz, you have the arm operators right there,” I said, pointing. Dr. Akana had used them to gather small samples of water. “Pick up your metal box.”
Gazzy caught on to the simple hand controls and quickly swept up the box with the claw. Then I hit my remote. Suddenly the doors beneath us opened, and the Triton slid clumsily into the ocean as I tried to keep us level.
It was way dark, and I peered out through the Plexiglas bubble, not wanting to turn on the headlights. Stealth was the answer here, and we would be as stealthy as a bright yellow, three-ton, bubble-trailing baby sub could be.
“I can’t tell where the noise is coming from,” said Gazzy. “We’ll have to check the whole sub.”
I nodded, jerkily moving us forward.
“Maybe I should drive,” Gazzy offered.
“Shut up,” I said, concentrating. We started sinking fast, and I frantically worked the lever to make us rise up and stabilize. I hated this. I hated it with a whole new kind of hate that I should probably have reserved for Mr. Chu.
Sweat broke out on my forehead, and my hand started cramping up from clutching the joystick too tightly. But I got us out from under the Mi
Gazzy practiced maneuvering the arms, and he accidentally whacked a big grouper in the side of its head. It darted off, while he muttered, “Sorry, sorry!”
“Do you see anything?” I asked.
“You mean, besides the sub the size of a football stadium? And a bunch of fish? Nope.”
I was getting better at driving, and we putt-putted along-side the sub. What was going on in there? Had the others made it to the front? Were they getting ready to evacuate?
Tap, tap! I almost screamed when something knocked on the Plexiglas above our heads. If the dumb-bots got a hold of the Triton…
Angel’s smiling face looked down at us. My eyes almost popped out of my head. She had done this again, after I’d lectured her the first time! I started yelling at her, but she ignored me, instead urgently pointing toward the aft of the Mi
I pushed the joystick forward and in another couple seconds, saw what she was warning me about: eight M-Geeks, clinging to the side of the big sub. One was wielding an underwater welding torch, and it was attempting to cut through the sub’s hull.
“Angel! Get behind us! Hide!” I yelled as loud as I could, which of course caused her to immediately let go of us and swim directly toward the M-Geeks.
I flicked on the headlights and again shoved the joystick forward, trying to increase our speed. I was forming a vague plan of having one of the Triton’s arms grab Angel somehow, but in another two seconds Angel had gotten close enough to the M-Geeks to actually tap on one’s head.
Immediately, all of them stopped working and swiveled to look at her. In the next instant, they had quickly grouped around her, and I saw they had little motors keeping them stable in the water.
“Do you see her?” I asked Gazzy tensely.
“Uh-uh.” His voice sounded choked. “They’re surrounding her. And I can’t use my bomb.”
I moved forward cautiously. The eight M-Geeks were a cluster of metal, tools, and weapons, shining brightly in my headlights. And there was no sign of Angel anywhere.
57
“I’M GONNA RAM them,” I said.
“No – you might crush her!”
“Okay, I’m go
“Max, be careful!”
“What else can I do?” I exclaimed. “I don’t exactly want to open our hatch and see if I’ve developed gills yet! We’ve got to get Angel out of there!”
Every muscle in my body was as taut as a wire as I moved closer to the throng of M-Geeks. Somewhere in that mess of violent metal was my baby, my Angel. She might think she could rule the world and do anything, but I knew that despite all her powers, she was still a flesh-and-blood, six-(possibly seven)-year-old girl. Who I needed to save. Again.
“Okay, you work the arms,” I whispered. “Try to push one aside.”
Gazzy’s face was white as he nodded, his hands clenched on the controls.
“On my mark,” I said. “One, two, thr -”
Suddenly the dumb-bots moved apart, revealing Angel. She seemed to be talking to them earnestly, motioning with her hands, trailing tiny bubbles out of her mouth.
I stared at her, then at Gazzy, whose jaw had dropped in surprise.
Then, as we watched, the dumb-bots seemed to huddle in for a consultation. A minute later, they started to disperse, heading off into the dark water one by one, their little fanlike rotors leaving small white trails behind them. Angel waved good-bye to them, then turned and wiggled her eyebrows at me and Gazzy.
I gave her the universal WTH expression, and she gri
With Angel still holding on, I turned the Triton around and headed back to the Mi
I was giving Angel a look of “Wait till we get back on board, missy,” which she was cheerfully ignoring, when her face suddenly went blank. Then her eyes widened in fear, and she pressed herself flat against the Plexiglas dome, her small knuckles white.
“What? What?” I cried. She looked in at me, and my heart turned to ice when I saw how scared she was.
In the next moment, a powerful swell of water came out of nowhere and swept us beneath the bigger sub, making us crash against its underside. Angel clung to the Triton and hunkered down.
“What the – there aren’t currents like this, this deep!” I said. Our dome smashed against the metal sub again, and my throat closed as I wondered just how tough the Plexiglas was.
“Holy crap!” Gazzy shouted, pointing.
A mountain was coming up out of the murky depths below us, creating such a huge swell that the Mi