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Informationen zum Autor Gloria Skurzynski is the author of more than fifty books for children and young adults, including Virtual War , The Clones , and The Revolt . Her books have won numerous awards, among them the Christopher Award, the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, the Golden Kite Award, and the Science Book Award from the American Institute of Physics. She lives with her husband, Ed, in Boise, Idaho. You can visit her website at gloriabooks.com. Leseprobe Chapter One The sky was blue. A real sky, a real color, with real clouds, not a collection of pixels in a virtual-reality Box. Every once in a while, when he had a brief moment to himself, Corgan would let this real world seep into his senses, reminding him how much better even one minute of reality felt compared with the fourteen years of virtuality he'd experienced inside his Box. He bent down to pick up a rock, a hardened piece of the lava that a couple million years earlier had spewed out of the ocean to create the Isles of Hiva. The rock filled his cupped hand with a satisfying weight. He ran his thumb across its porous surface and then, taking aim, hurled it toward the top of a tall coconut palm, smiling when he heard the thwack of rock hitting nut. The coconut he'd chosen fell neatly into the sand at his feet. For no particular reason Corgan calculated the speed of his throw and the arc of its trajectory. At one time he'd been able to split microseconds in his mind, but not anymore. Glancing again at the treetop, mentally computing its height to be 11.47 meters, he happened to notice a small black dot moving in the sky above the palm fronds. Too high for a seagull, it might be a frigatebird, but frigatebirds didn't fly that fast. As the object grew larger he heard the drone of an airplane. The Harrier jet! But the lab at Nuku Hiva wasn't scheduled to receive a flight for a couple more weeks, so why would the Harrier be coming now? Corgan ran toward the landing strip and reached it just as the jet dropped vertically onto the concrete pad. After the engines slowed and quieted, the hatch opened, allowing the passenger seated behind the pilot to climb out. A helmet and a blue LiteSuit hid the passenger's identity until gloved hands reached up to remove the headgear, releasing a cascade of golden hair. Sharla! Corgan's heart beat loudly enough that he could calculate its rhythm without even trying. Four months earlier he and Sharla had said good-bye, not long after celebrating their fifteenth birthdays together. Now here she was again, for whatever reason -- it didn't matter. She'd come back to Nuku Hiva; that was enough. He reached her and threw his arms around her, but she returned only a one-armed hug because her right hand clutched a flight bag. "Wait!" she told him as she carefully set the bag onto the tarmac. "Make sure you don't step on it," she said, laughing a little, and then both her arms flew around him, and she kissed him until he grew dizzy. "Where can we go to talk?" she whispered. "Privately, I mean." "Uh...you remember the barn where I work with the transgenic cattle?" "It's only been four months -- of course I remember. I'll meet you there. Take this bag, handle it very carefully, and don't look inside until I get there. I have to check in at the lab first. As soon as I can get away, I'll come to the barn." Waiting beside the Harrier jet, Pilot called out, "Sharla, hurry," and then both of them were gone. Corgan stood there, bewildered, growing even more perplexed when he thought he saw the bag move slightly, not more than a few millimeters, but...no, he must have imagined it. When he picked it up, it was heavier than he'd expected. Trudging up the hill toward the barn, he started to swing the bag, then remembered Sharla telling him to handle it carefully. The barn smelled of hay and...
