CyKid and CyLuna: The Key to the Seven Gates

At 11:17, CyKid had just made the telescope show him his own eyebrow. He was deciding whether that counted as a discovery when the whole telescope turned without him.

“CyLuna? Did you touch it?”

His sister was on the other side of the room, opening a tin of biscuits. She put the lid down very gently. “Did you?”

They looked through the eyepiece in turns. Three black shapes were crossing the face of the moon. One stopped, reversed, and slipped behind the other two. CyKid lifted the little field binoculars off their hook and checked. There they were again.

A biscuit rolled out of the open tin. CyDog let it roll past his nose. That was when CyKid began to worry.

Under a dust sheet, something ticked. CyBot pulled the sheet away from a round copper table. Grandpa called it his weather map. CyLuna had always wondered why a weather map had seven sockets and no clouds.

Six sockets lit up. The empty one held a needle that turned a little, paused, then turned again. A sound came out of the table like a voice traveling a very long way down a pipe.

“Crossing at twelve seventeen. Ground defenses to be cleared.”

“Those ships are coming here?” CyKid asked.

CyBot touched a probe to the rim. The voice cut out, and every window in the dome rattled. Outside, a pale circle opened above the bay. Behind it, for just a second, CyLuna saw a sky with two moons.

“CyKid! Gallery. CyLuna, down to the cellar. Hurry, my little stars.”

Grandpa's voice rose up the stairwell. He even cleared his throat the way he did before telling them that their cocoa was getting cold.

CyKid took the first step. CyLuna caught his elbow. Grandpa was supposed to be across the bay helping mend a lighthouse window. Perhaps the shaking had brought him home. Perhaps there was a quicker way down than either of them knew.

“Grandpa,” she called, “did you bring your wet boots up?”

“CyKid! Gallery. CyLuna, down to the cellar.” The voice came back at exactly the same speed.

CyDog sniffed the railing, sneezed, and put all four feet firmly against going down.

At the landing there was a lit handprint on the gallery door. It was shaped just like Grandpa's, down to the little finger he could never straighten. CyKid reached toward it. The print darted up the door like a spider, too fast to be attached to anyone's arm.

From below came the soft scrape of CyDog's nails. This time the dog was eager to follow something. CyLuna leaned over and smelled the familiar mixture of salt, orange peel, and machine oil from Grandpa's work coat.

“Follow the smell. I'll check the gallery,” CyKid said. He gave his sister a flashlight. “Meet you back at the map.”

They left both doors propped open. Whatever had called them wanted the two doors shut.

In the gallery, CyKid found a small glass clock shining on the ceiling. A second hand raced around its face. Under the hands was a picture of seven circles joining up, followed by a picture of ships passing through.

Downstairs, CyDog nosed an orange peel out of Grandpa's work coat. In its pocket CyLuna found a notebook with a line rubbed away. She rubbed a pencil sideways across the next page. The impression underneath came out like tracks in fresh snow.

When they met on the stairs, CyKid held up a tracing of the clock. CyLuna held up the notebook. Its recovered line ended with four words she read twice. “Below the cliff. Low tide.”

Out the window, the bay was already creeping up the beach.

A stairway led from the cellar out onto the cliff. At the turn, the sea poured over the bottom step and slapped their ankles.

“We can still get across,” said CyKid. He put one foot out and pulled it back fast. The step had vanished beneath a wave.

CyUni lowered her horn. Its light picked out something yellow high on the wall. A railing followed a maintenance ledge they had mistaken for a shadow. It began just above CyLuna's head. She found its ladder behind a loose shutter.

From the ledge they could see down into the cliff. A wheel there was turning with the tide, and a taut copper line ran from it all the way up to their map.

The window above the ledge filled with purple light. A three-fingered glove came through a ring that had opened in midair. It felt along the sill until it found the transmitter cable. One tug, and the aerial above them went dark.

Behind the glove came a small figure in an indigo suit. Its silver helmet turned first toward the children, then toward a box bolted to the railing. The ring shivered and shrank behind it.

CyBot tried his radio. All he got was a thin, steady whistle.

“One scout,” he said. “That opening barely fit its helmet. The ships need all seven gates to connect.”

The scout slipped down a ladder into the cliff. The little box was still there. Inside it was a brass dial.

CyLuna turned the dial toward a raised notch. It resisted, then clicked under her thumb. Far above them, through the cellar window, a spot of gold winked out on the map.

The empty socket's needle jumped one place clockwise.

“Did you see that?” she asked.

CyKid was watching the purple ring fold away. He had seen the bright flash, but he had missed the needle. CyLuna drew seven circles on the back of Grandpa's rubbing and put a small arrow next to the one she thought had moved.

“If it jumps again, we'll know what to look for.”

She left space for another arrow. One jump could have happened for all sorts of reasons. Two jumps in the same direction would give them something to work with.

CyKid went back for the spare aerial. In the gallery, CyLuna was standing inside the far window. He could see her curls and the stars on her leggings.

“Open the dial again,” she said. “I got stuck.”

He took a step toward her. Then he remembered how carefully his sister had recorded the jump. “What did we call the cloud that looked like a pancake?”

A smile appeared in the window a little too late. “A pancake,” it said.

CyLuna had named that cloud Mr. Pudding and had drawn him wearing boots. The thing in the glass had not been there that afternoon. CyKid backed out with the aerial and closed the shutter. From behind it, his own voice asked about the pancake.

Back at the copper table, CyBot laid the tracing of the clock over the notebook rubbing. The lines matched the outline of a tunnel. The apparent scratch in the middle of CyLuna's rubbing was a crossing point, and a dot on CyKid's tracing marked it.

“Grandpa left instructions for reaching the lock,” CyLuna said. “The key is down there.”

CyBot attached the spare aerial. He could talk to the old dials again from here, although the cable to the outside was still broken. He handed the children a little receiver with an amber lamp.

“If the seventh gate moves, this lamp blinks. Count the flashes.”

The lamp went black as they entered the cliff. In the silence, a girl's voice whispered, “Please don't close another one.”

They saw no girl on the far bank. There was only a rope bridge across the inlet and a lantern swinging above it.

CyKid walked out first. A surge hit the rock below, and the bridge swung so sharply that the planks stood almost on edge. He held the ropes and waited for his shoes to touch wood again.

CyDog barked at a lower rail. A thick service rope, bolted into the stone at both ends, ran beneath the bridge. The children could use it to steady themselves across the last stretch.

On the far bank, CyLuna turned to hold the rope for CyBot. When she reached for the lantern again, it was gone. A sea-green sleeve flashed between two crystal columns.

“Wait!” CyLuna ran after the sleeve. The light ducked under a stone arch and went out. She stopped before the dark could make her run into something.

CyDog wanted to follow. CyLuna scratched his ears and gave him a moment to sniff. He led them past the arch to a stack of old sailcloth. A single drop of warm lantern oil was still drying on the stone.

Behind the sailcloth sat a girl holding the lantern against her raincoat. She had dark curls, a scraped knee, and a blue transmitter clasped so tightly that her knuckles had gone pale.

“You're Mara?” CyKid asked. He had seen the name scratched into a cup on the shelf.

“Give me five minutes,” she said. “My family needs that gate.”

Mara played the first half of a recording. An adult said her name twice. In the background a child was trying very hard to sound cheerful. “We found a place to wait, Mara. The light is going out.”

Then came a click, followed by a voice so smooth it sounded as if it had practiced. “Open the last gate, and your family comes home.”

Mara pressed the button again. The same click cut the family off in the same place.

CyLuna recognized the promise for what it was. The person who had made it controlled the only recording Mara had heard.

“Will you let CyBot listen to the click?” she asked. Mara hesitated, then set the transmitter on the floor between them. “You can hold it while he listens,” CyLuna added.

CyUni swept her light slowly across the stone plinth at the center of the cavern. The glow caught a gold edge under a lip of stone. CyKid lifted out a piece shaped like the bow of a key, with three small teeth. Mara took a second piece from a narrow slot on the opposite side. Its four teeth looked like a stair in miniature.

Together the pieces formed seven teeth. Between them ran a join so fine CyLuna could hardly see it. Mara separated them immediately.

“Will the last gate close if one of us keeps a piece?”

CyKid checked the diagram cut into the plinth. It showed a full key entering a lock. He shook his head.

Mara slipped her half into her coat.

CyBot's receiver buzzed. He had found two dials wired to the old copper line, one at the lighthouse and one beneath the bell tower. With CyLuna watching the map on her sketch, he closed them one at a time.

The seventh light jumped one place after the first click. It jumped one more after the second.

CyLuna marked both moves. “One socket clockwise for every closed gate. We can find where it will stop.”

She counted the three remaining closures around the ring. Her pencil landed on the chamber below them, the one the tides had been filling all evening.

Mara took the pencil and made a mark beside it. “There's another path there,” she said. “I've seen a boat go through it.”

In the next chamber, six lanterns burned. CyKid could see his sister behind every one of them.

One CyLuna told him to drop the key. Another told him to close his eyes. A third was crying, but its shoulders never moved. Mara heard her own father calling from the lowest ledge, where the waves were washing over his shoes without getting them wet.

The People of Darkness had taken the faces from windows and the words from the air. Here in the crystal chamber they could put a face beside any words they liked.

CyDog ran past all six lanterns to a plain gap in the rock. He barked once. From across the chamber came a real, breathless laugh. CyLuna was glad he had found her.

The gap opened onto a broken walkway. CyLuna stood at one end, and somebody who looked exactly like her stood at the other. The copy lifted a flashlight and waved it the way CyKid had waved his on the stairs.

CyKid pointed his light at the rock, where the false faces could not see his hands. He sent the signal he and his sister used from their bedrooms when one of them could not sleep. Two quick taps, a pause, and one long beam.

A long beam came back from CyLuna's side. Two quick taps followed. That was their answer.

He turned toward her. The copy flashed all three lights at once. By then, CyKid was already helping his sister onto the walkway.

Something silver dropped from a beam. The scout landed on the narrow walkway, caught CyKid's key half, and ran toward the tide chamber.

CyKid sprang after it. Then Mara cried out from below. A plank had tipped, and she was holding its edge with one hand. Water climbed past her coat pocket. The scout rounded a bend.

CyKid lay flat and reached down. His fingertips just touched Mara's. CyLuna hooked an arm around his knees and pulled until Mara could get a foot against the rock.

The three lay still for a moment. CyKid could hear the scout's boots, farther away with every step. Mara uncurled her hand. She had held onto the other half of the key all the way through.

The scout pushed a movable mirror across the passage, turning the narrow path into a hall of reflections. Each one looked like an open tunnel.

CyUni set her horn close to the floor. Her beam showed the reflections ending at the mirror's edge. The real tunnel carried the light farther, past a cracked column and down toward the water.

From the receiver came CyBot's voice. “Fourth dial ready.”

CyLuna held the sketch flat while he turned it. The amber lamp blinked, and an old marker in the real tunnel briefly glowed. Exactly one socket clockwise.

The scout knew the tide chamber was important. Now the children knew which opening the scout had used, and exactly where the last gate would appear.

CyBot had taken the transmitter's little memory card up to the observatory. He played the recording through the receiver. Mara heard her name and the words about the light going out. Then, where the click had been, her father took a breath.

“If you get a chance to reach safety, take it. We have enough air to wait for a different way out. We can see a blue light on the old waystation. We just can't reach it.”

Mara sat down on a dry rock and cried. CyLuna sat beside her. There was no time to wait for the tears to stop, so they counted the family's safe path together while they cried.

“Let me tell them where to go,” Mara said.

The fastest path to the tide chamber was filling with water. CyDog followed a strip of wet footprints along the wall. At the end he put his nose into a gap beneath a hinged grate and scratched at it.

CyKid lifted the grate. On a shelf inside was a thread of torn indigo cloth. A glint below it caught CyLuna's light. The stolen half of the key had dropped through a crack and landed in a dry cup of stone.

CyDog could squeeze farther than any of them. CyLuna held his collar so he could lean down safely. He brought the piece back in his teeth, gave it to CyKid, and then sat waiting for the biscuit he had missed upstairs.

The fifth dial sat on a platform exposed only between waves. CyLuna watched the water touch a dark line on the wall. The next wave covered the line a little sooner. The tide was coming in, but between the largest waves there was still a short gap.

CyKid counted with her. They waited through two surges, then she crossed in the quieter interval, turned the dial, and came back holding the rail.

On the far wall, a side passage opened for a moment. It led to the little blue light Mara's father had described.

“There,” said Mara. She had taken the transmitter out of her pocket. “That's where I'm sending them.”

The bridge into the tide chamber had twisted loose at one end. Every wave tipped it toward the water. Mara could reach the far bank before the tide climbed another step, if someone held the bridge steady.

CyKid wrapped the service rope around a stone post. CyLuna and CyUni leaned into it. As Mara crossed, a plank broke beneath her heel. She grabbed the handrope, waited for the bridge to settle, and put her foot where she could feel two solid boards.

The gold key half had left a warm patch against her pocket. She held it through the fabric for a second, then let go and reached for the far rail with both hands.

At the observatory, CyBot heard the old aerial begin to hum. He could give the sixth dial a pulse of power, but only if he took the power from the lights in the lower cavern.

“Ready for darkness?” he asked.

Four voices answered together, and one dog barked.

CyBot threw the switch. Darkness rushed over the cave. Then the sixth dial clicked. A circle rose out of the water in exactly the position CyLuna had marked. On the other side of it, an immense ship turned. Behind it were rows of ships with the same thin lights.

The seventh gate had arrived. It would finish opening in less than a minute.

Mara set her half of the key on the pedestal. Up close, the gold was warm and scratched, as though generations of people had turned it with worried hands.

CyKid set his half beside hers. They slid the pieces together. One tooth stuck up, and he tried to press it flat. CyLuna saw a grain of sand in the join and brushed it out with the corner of her sleeve. The pieces clicked together.

On the other side of the gate, a ship began to move.

Mara lifted the transmitter. “I can give you the clear signal as soon as they're out.”

CyLuna laid both hands on the key. CyKid put his hands next to hers. They waited for Mara's signal.

Mara called her family on the channel where she had heard the promise. A smooth voice answered and told her to leave the gate alone.

She switched to the channel CyBot had recovered from the recording. A much smaller voice asked whether the blue light was safe.

“Keep it on your left,” Mara said. “There's a narrow route beside it. I can see the end from here.”

Through the side passage she saw a tiny pod turn toward the waystation. There was a pause long enough for her to wonder whether they had heard. Then two blue lights flashed from its window. The pod was moving away from Earth.

Mara raised her free hand. “Clear!”

Just as the children fitted the key, the scout jammed a piece of metal into the lock. Its silver helmet lit up as the ship beyond the gate drew closer.

CyUni lowered her horn until the light shone into the locking teeth. CyLuna could see a tiny gap left by the metal. She described it into the receiver, one tooth at a time. CyBot checked Grandpa's drawing.

“Press inward first,” he said. “Then turn toward the shallow tooth.”

The scout grabbed the shaft. Mara leaned across the plinth and swung the hinged safety cover shut over the handle. The scout jerked its glove clear. Under the cover, the children felt the key move inward.

For a second the two halves of the key felt like they were coming apart. CyKid held his side steady, and CyLuna turned hers in the direction CyBot had called. The teeth caught. They turned together.

A flash ran around the rim of the gate. The first ship was almost at the opening when the view of space contracted to a little circle. CyKid saw the scout touch a button on its helmet and step into the shrinking light. The ring closed with a sound like a book shutting.

Far to their left, the blue waystation light still blinked in the separate passage. Mara checked it twice before she allowed herself to sit down.

By sunrise the five friends were back on the cliff. CyDog had finally found his biscuit and was looking for a second one. CyBot set the receiver on a dry stone in the sun.

A voice crackled through. “We're here, Mara. The waystation door is open.” A little voice in the background added, “And the soup is orange.”

Mara laughed so suddenly that CyUni pricked up both ears. She asked her family to keep talking while the children made a new map. On it they marked each closed gate, the safe route, and the places where they had used the ropes.

CyLuna drew in one more detail. Next to the bridge she put a little biscuit for the one explorer who could follow a trail through the dark.

The tide was going out. Grandfather would come back from the lighthouse and find salt on the stairs, a broken aerial, and six pages of notes waiting beside his telescope.

CyKid was wondering which of those things Grandpa would notice first when CyBot turned his head toward the water. From the receiver came three quick pings, a pause, and three more. A tiny green line began drawing itself on his display.

“It's coming from below us,” he said. “Deep below.”

CyLuna looked at the seven dark circles on the copper map through the open window. The pings had a position of their own, out beyond the reef.

“Mark it,” she said. “And write down the time.”