Read more
Informationen zum Autor D. J. MacHale Klappentext The third and fourth installments in the "New York Times" bestselling epic series featuring 14-year-old Bobby Pendragon, who travels through space and time, are now available in these special hardcover editions.Chapter 1: First Earth That´s where I am. First Earth. Veelox was a misdirection. Spader and I flumed to Veelox, but found the action wasn´t there. It was here on First Earth. Where is First Earth? The better question is, when is First Earth? I´m in New York City and it´s 1937. March of 1937 to be exact. To be really exact, it´s March 11 of 1937. I´m writing this on my birthday. Here´s a weird thought: If I´m in 1937 and it´s my birthday, did I still turn fifteen? Kind of freaky, no? I´ll begin this new journal by telling you I stumbled into the most bizarro, confusing, dangerous situation yet. But then again, haven´t I said that before? Let me give you a little taste of what happened in only the first few minutes since I got here.... Spader and I were nearly killed. Three times. We were also robbed and witnessed a gruesome murder. Happy birthday to me! The way things are going, I know what I want for my fifteenth birthday...the chance to have a sixteenth. When Spader and I flumed in from Veelox, I had no idea of what "First Earth" meant. Since I´m from Second Earth, I could only guess that First Earth was sometime in the Earth´s past. But how far past? For all I knew we were fluming back to a time when quigs were dinosaurs and we´d be on the run from hungry, yellow-eyed raptors. I was totally relieved to find that when we landed at the gate, it was the exact same rocky room that I had been through many times before. Yes, we had arrived at the gate off the subway tunnel in the Bronx, New York. Phew. At least there were no T-rexes or Neanderthals waiting for us. That was the good news. Bad news was that we weren´t alone. As soon as the flume dropped us off, I saw two guys standing there, facing us. They wore old-fashioned gray suits, like Clark Kent wears in the old Superman show on TV Land. Actually, a better analogy is that these guys were dressed like the bad guys from that old show, because that´s what they were. Bad guys. Very bad guys. They wore wide-brimmed hats that were pulled down low and had white handkerchiefs around their noses and mouths like banditos. There´s only one word to describe these dudes. Gangsters. Their eyes looked wide and scared. No big surprise. They had just seen Spader and me drop out of nowhere in an explosion of light and music. They seemed totally stunned, which was good because there was one other detail I haven´t mentioned.... They were both holding machine guns that were aimed at the flume -- and at us. "Down!" I yelled at Spader. The two of us jumped to opposite sides of the flume just as the gangsters started shooting. I crouched in a ball, totally unprotected as the deadly clatter from their rapid-fire guns echoed off the rocky walls. I thought for sure I´d get hit, but after a few seconds the shooting stopped, and I was still intact. I was afraid to move and even more afraid to look over and see if Spader was okay. The sharp explosions fell off to a distant echo that bounced around the cavelike room. My ears were ringing and the chemical smell of gunpowder burned my nose. I figured this was what it must be like to be in a war. "Get up!" one of the gangsters ordered. "Hands in the air!" I cautiously looked over to Spader and saw that he was okay. We stood slowly and raised our hands. The gangsters held their guns on us. I didn´t know why. It wasn´t like we had weapons of our own. The second gangster kept glancing nervously between the two of us. He looked almost as scared as we were. Almost. "Th-They from Mars?" he asked his buddy nervously. Under less terrifying cir...
