“Dr. Tinker?”
Will nodded slowly. “Environmentalists don’t care much for water explorers.”
“But why would they blow the dam?”
Will wrinkled his nose, but before he could respond, the hover-carrier slowed, then came to a gentle rest on something firm. I could hear the crunch of earth and rock. I looked at Will, and he signaled for me to be quiet. He stood, and with my help he inched the desalinator closer to the door. His leg was bleeding again, but he didn’t notice. Instead he flipped a switch on the machine and took a hose in his hand. The machine started humming quietly and gave off a smell like two rocks cracked together. Will and I crouched in the darkness, silent except for the sound of our breathing. We stood for what seemed like an hour. I thought my legs would give out. My toes ached, and the scratches in my hands were inflamed. I couldn’t imagine what Will must be feeling. The pain was nearly unearthly.
Then outside we heard men talking.
“They don’t care about the doctor,” said a man’s voice.
“And the children?”
“It’s good money for the mines.”
“Shame.”
“Not our problem.”
Someone fiddled with the locks, and then the door creaked open. Sunlight streamed into the cargo hold like a bouquet of sharp needles. A man stepped into the doorway, blocking the sun. It took him a moment to adjust to the darkness, and in that space, quick as a sand fly, Will sprang.
The man screamed and fell backward into the dirt.
CHAPTER 11
Run, Will, run!” I screamed.
Will stood in the open doorway of the cargo hold, shooting hot steam over the prone bodies of two guards. It was as if he were frozen, unable to move. Then he snapped out of it and let me help him out of the truck.
“Quick, they’ll be here in a second,” I said.
“I can’t run.”
“I’ll help you.”
Will shook his head. “The carrier. We can drive it.”
“I don’t know how to drive.”
“I do,” he insisted.
Even if Will could drive with his injured leg, there was a big difference between steering a rundown electric car and a hydrogen-fueled hovercraft capable of going several hundred kilometers an hour. On the other hand, I knew it was our only real chance. If we evaded the environmentalists, we still wouldn’t get far on the sand. The carrier gave us a fighting chance of escape. As for the border, we would just have to deal with it when we reached it. If we reached it.
I helped Will limp to the front of the carrier, averting my eyes from the burned bodies of the two guards by the rear door. There were three other carriers about two hundred meters distant, and men hustled about, unloading supplies and equipment. No one had noticed us yet, but our absence wouldn’t go undetected for long.
Will pulled himself into the driver’s seat, and I swung around to the other side of the front cab. The instrument panel was complicated, packed with levers and switches. There was no steering wheel; just two paddles thick with buttons. It didn’t look anything like our father’s car. Will flipped a switch on the front panel, but nothing happened; then he pushed another one, and the panel lit up.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.
“I know,” said Will, sounding annoyed.
“They could shoot us.”
“Not if they want their desalinator.”
Will was right. If PELA destroyed the carrier, they would destroy the desalinator and all the weapons in the hold. They might be able to replace the weapons, but a portable desalinator was extremely rare and would literally keep them alive. Nasri and his men would think twice before risking its loss. They didn’t know, of course, that Will had already dismantled it.
The engine made a whirring noise that sounded promising. Then the carrier lurched forward a couple meters and stopped suddenly with a force that threw me to the floor.
“Sorry,” said Will. “Buckle up.”
I brushed myself off, and this time I buckled myself into the passenger seat. Will flipped a couple switches and gently squeezed both paddles. The hover-carrier lifted into the air, hovering about a meter above the ground.
“Now what?” I asked.
Will pulled back on one paddle while pushing the other forward, and the carrier rotated slowly in a circle. Then he reversed direction, and the carrier spun the other way. “Just like Death Racer,” he said. When he brought the paddles back to the middle, the carrier stopped spinning and hovered above the ground. “Cool,” he said.
Just then a man emerged from one of the other carriers. He was tall, with white hair that stood straight up, and he wore a scientist’s white lab coat. Nasri followed closely behind him. The two men walked about ten meters, and then Nasri withdrew something from his pocket and waved it at the man.
“He’s got a gun,” I said.
The first man stopped, and Nasri walked two steps closer to him, leveling the gun at his back. The man turned, faced Nasri, and bowed his head toward the ground.