Starsight

I’d done decompression exercises, and somehow managed to exhale before my lungs burst. Water boiled on my eyes, and pain shot through me, and I started to black out almost immediately. Yet I was just aware enough to feel a pair of hands grab me.

EPILOGUE

The sound grew louder the deeper Jorgen went.

It wasn’t a buzzing, not like when he’d first met Spensa. He wasn’t even certain it was a sound. Nedd and Arturo couldn’t hear it, after all. Maybe he was imagining it.

But Jorgen could hear it. A soft music, growing louder with each tunnel they had explored in the five days they’d been searching. They’d hit many dead ends and had to turn back a dozen times. But they were close now. So close he felt it was just beyond the wall here. He had to find a way to lead them left . . .

He stumbled down a short incline, then waded through water that came up to his knees. He held his industrial-strength lantern up before him, the kind used by the teams who traveled the distant tunnels and caverns of the planet to service remote equipment like pipes that carried up water from underground reservoirs.

“More water?” Arturo asked from behind, his own lantern making Jorgen cast a long shadow. “Jorgen, we really should get back. I could swear that sound we heard was an echo of the alarms. We might be under attack.”

All the more reason to keep going. He waded forward as the water grew deeper. He had to know what he was hearing. Had to know if he was imagining things, or if . . . maybe . . . he could hear Detritus.

That seemed stupid when he thought about it like that. He hadn’t told the others yet, except to explain he was on orders from Cobb. Which he kind of was. After a fashion.

And everyone believes I can’t disobey orders, he thought. They don’t think I can be brash? Foolhardy? Ha!

Running off into the deep caverns without proper supplies, and only a couple friends to accompany him? Following a hunch and something he maybe thought he could hear, only nobody else could?

“Jorgen?” Nedd asked, standing with Arturo at the edge of the water. “Come on. We’ve been at this forever. Arturo is right. We really need to be getting back.”

“It’s right here, guys,” Jorgen said, hip deep in water, a hand pressed against the stone wall. “Songs. Right here. We have to get through this wall.”

“Okaaay,” Arturo said. “So we head back, see if anyone has mapped this section of the tunnels, and maybe determine if there’s a good way to . . .”

Jorgen felt across the wall, noting that the water seemed to be flowing oddly. “There’s an opening here, just beneath the surface. It might be wide enough for me to wiggle through.”

“No,” Arturo said. “Jorgen, do not try to squeeze through it. You’ll get stuck and drown.”

Jorgen dropped his pack, letting his waterproof lantern float on the top of the pool. He reached down into the water, feeling at the break in the wall. It was wide enough. “Spensa would try it,” he said.

“Uh,” Nedd said, “is Spin really the best example to follow? In acting stupid?”

“Well, she does it all the time,” Jorgen said. “So she must have a lot of practice.”

Arturo rushed into the water, reaching for him. So, before he could get talked—or pulled—out of going farther, Jorgen took a deep breath and ducked under the surface, then kicked into the hole.

He couldn’t see in the water; his motions had stirred up silt, and so the lantern wouldn’t have helped either. He had to feel his way forward, grabbing the sides of the rock tunnel, and pull himself through the dark water.

Fortunately, it turned out that the tunnel wasn’t long—it wasn’t even really a tunnel. Just a passage through the stone, maybe a meter and a half in length.

He burst up into a dark cavern, and immediately felt stupid. What did he expect to find or see in the darkness? He should have drowned.

Then he heard the sounds. Music all around him. Flutes calling to him. The sound of the planet itself speaking?

His eyes adjusted, and he realized he could see. The stone here outside the small pool where he stood was overgrown with a blue-green luminescent kind of fungus. Indeed, much larger mushrooms were growing all across the floor of the cavern, perhaps feeding off nutrient-rich water dripping from an ancient pipe running along the wall.

Hiding amid the mushrooms, fluting in a way he could now hear with both his mind and his ears, were a group of yellow creatures. Slugs, like Spensa’s pet.

Hundreds of them.

I awoke to a soft breeze on my face.

I blinked, disoriented, seeing white. I was back in that room with the delver. No, I couldn’t be! I . . .

The room came into focus. I was in a bed with white sheets, but the walls weren’t stark white. Just a cream color. A window nearby looked out on the streets of Starsight, a soft breeze blowing in and ruffling the drapes.