"A fine boy," he said. "I'm sure he's a fine amba.s.sador for St. Norbert's."

"Amba.s.sador?" said George. "To where?"

Greystoke cleared his throat, sounding as if he were gargling glue.

"Many years ago," he said, "the Board of Trustees saw fit to establish a program abroad for our more excellent boys. To broaden their perspective. To widen their horizons, quite literally. I'm happy to say that your cousina"or is it cousin once removed?a"qualified for this most generous program."

"You sent him away," George said, his voice carrying a hint of challenge.

"We afforded him an opportunity. It is our role as legal guardians to offer our lads the best that life can offer."

I can see that, thought Molly, recalling the cries she'd heard in the foyer. Aloud, she said, "And when exactly did you send my cousin away? And to where?"

Greystoke consulted the folder again, turning a few pages without appearing to actually look at them.

"It would seem that our records are incomplete," he said finally. "I don't seem to see either a date of departure or a destination. Though I'm sure yourarelative is in the best of hands."

"But you took my money!" said George.

"Yes," said Greystoke. "And then I performed the service of checking the records. Which, as I say, are unfortunately incomplete."

"You sent him away, and you don't know where?" said Molly, her voice rising. "Can you at least tell me when?"

"I'm sorry," said Greystoke, sounding not at all sorrowful. "I can't help you there. Although perhaps Mr. Grempkin can. He handles the arrangements for the boys who are sent to Runaabroad."

Molly and George both caught the name Greystoke had half uttered, but neither reacted.

"Well," said Molly, "can you tell me anything about him? Can you at least tell me his name?"

Again Greystoke leafed through the folder, which Molly was now certain was just a prop. He looked up, shrugged, and said, "I'm afraid we don'ta""

"You said he was a fine boy," interrupted George. "But you don't even know his name."

"We have so many boys herea"" Greystoke began.

"I want my money back," said George, standing up.

"Hold on, there," said Greystoke. "Mrs. Wilson!" Immediately the old lady appeared.

"Yes, sir?"

"The Pan boy," Greystoke said.

"Yes, sir."

"I've put these young people on to Grempkin for the details of the program abroad. But what was the boy's given namea"do you recall? It's lost among the cobwebs, I'm afraid." He tapped his head and tried on a smile that didn't fit.

"Oh, yes, sir. I remember him well. Peter, he was. Peter Pan."

Molly suppressed a gasp. This was the name she'd been expecting. But hearing it was altogether different. "Peter," she said.

"A lively boy he was," said Mrs. Wilson. "A shame thata""

"Thank you, Mrs. Wilson," interrupted Greystoke. "That will be fine. Now I must ask you two young people to leave. I've a great deal of work to do."

"Yes, I'm sure you do," said George, looking pointedly at Greystoke's empty desk.

Greystoke glared at George, then turned to Molly. "I wish you luck in finding your relative," he said. "I wish I could have been more helpful."

"Do you?" said Molly, staring at Greystoke until he turned away.

Leaving Greystoke's office, Molly and George retraced their steps down the corridor. They found Grempkin waiting in the foyer; he took five pounds from George but revealed little in exchange. He said he had taken the boy Peter, along with four others, to London, and put them on a ship headed abroad, but he claimed to have no recollection of the name of the ship or its destination. By this point Molly and George knew they would get little more from St. Norbert's, so they went outside, where the cab was waiting. They spoke quietly on the ride back to the train station.

"I can see why they don't want to tell us anything," said George. "They're obviously selling the boys as slaves to Rundoon."

"Yes," said Molly. "And one of those boys was Peter. That's quite an amazing coincidence, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well," said Molly, "first we find out that the person who had been warning the Starcatchers when starstuff was about to fall was this Mr. Pan. Then we learn that he disappeared under mysterious circ.u.mstances and that he had a son. Now we learn that the son was our own Peter."

George flinched; he did not like the possessive tone Molly used when she talked about Peter. George sometimes wished there was no Peter.

"But it gets even odder," continued Molly. "Peter, after years at St. Norbert's, was sent to Rundoon, and it just so happens that the ship he was placed on was the same ship that I was traveling on. And, more important, it was the ship secretly carrying the largest starstuff Fall in many years. Now do you think that could possibly be a coincidence?"

"No," said George.

"I don't either," said Molly.

"So what do you think it means?" said George.

"I think Peter was meant to be on that ship," said Molly. "I don't know who meant him to be there. I suspect the gentlemen at St. Norbert's do, but clearly they don't intend to tell us. But he was meant to be there, I'm sure of it, and it seems likely the reason has something to do with his father, the mysterious Mr. Pan. And I wonder ifa" Molly trailed off, looking out the cab window.

"If what?" prompted George.

"If perhaps this explains Peter's unusual powers."

"I thought that was the starstuff," said George. "When he was exposed to it, he suddenly could fly and so on."

"Yes," said Molly. "But that exposure should have killed him. Instead, it changed him. Father said that was very, very unusual. I think the reason it happened has something to do with his father."

"But what?"

"I don't know," said Molly. "But I believe there's a connection between Peter's father going missing and Peter's powers and the fact that the Starcatchers are no longer being warned about the starstuff Falls. And I strongly suspect that the Others have something to do with all of this. I need to tell my father about this immediately."

"But your father is in Paris."

"Then we must go to Paris."

"All right," said George. "We'll go to Paris."

"Thank you, George," said Molly, resting her hand on his for just a moment. In that moment, George felt two strong and conflicting emotions: the thrill of setting off on another adventure with Molly and resentment over the fact that, once again, the adventure revolved around Peter.

CHAPTER 13.

THE POD.

THE POD SLID SWIFTLY THROUGH THE SEA, deep enough to leave no sign, not even a ripple, on the surface above.

The pod was made of metal, but not an earthly metal; it was blacker than coal, harder than diamond, stronger than steel. It was a sleek cylinder, seventy-five feet in length and tapered to a sharp point at each end.

The interior was divided into compartments. At the moment the one at the forward end, a small, totally dark enclosed chamber, held only Ombra. At the aft end of the pod were four large cages. Between these and Ombra's chamber was an open main cabin, lit by a lone swaying lantern overhead and occupied by eight members of the Rundoon Royal Guard.

They were hand-picked mena"strong, skilled, well-armed fighters. Each one was brave, battle-tested, anda"at the momenta"quite terrified. They did not show their fear; they were too disciplined for that. But they were afraid nonethelessa"of the thing in the forward compartment but also of the bizarre vessel in which they were traveling.

When they had been ordered to report to the harbor in Maknar, they had expected to be boarding a sailing ship. Instead, on arriving at the appointed dock, they had been surprised to findanothing. Where a ship should have been, there was only a patch of murky water. The guardsmen waited a few minutes, not knowing what to do.

Then the murky water began to bubble and swell. As the men stared, a long black shape broke through the surface and rose, settling itself against the dock. A section of the hull slid open smoothly, creating an opening about six feet wide, with stairs leading to the dim interior of the hull. The guardsmen looked at it uncertainly, none of them moving.

Then a voice came from inside the hull, an inhuman groan.

"Enter," it said.

The guardsmen did not want to enter, but they were disciplined soldiers, and they knew the horrible price they would pay if they disobeyed an order. And so, one by one, they descended the stairway into the main cabin. The instant the last man was inside, the opening slid silently shut. They were now trapped inside this strange vessel.

"You will remain in this cabin," said the groaning voice. The men looked forward and saw its source: the dark shape of Ombra, nearly invisible in the gloom.

"We will travel for one day," he said. "I will give you further orders when we arrive at our destination."

Ombra turned and glided through the opening into his forward chamber. The door closed silently. The guardsmen looked at one another. Each had many questions; none had any answers.

They felt the vessel descend. They heard the water sloshing against the sides and then overhead. They were underwater.

And then they were movinga"slowly as they left the harbor, then faster and faster, until the swooshing sound of water slipping past the hull made conversation difficult. The guardsmen could see nothing, as the vessel had no portholes, but it felt to them as though they were moving far faster than any normal sailing ship. And, in fact, they were.

The men heard no engine sound; they did not know how the vessel was moving. It was just as well that they didn't. Their fear would have grown tenfold had they been able to peer into the gloomy water ahead to see what moved the pod so swiftly through the water.

It was pulled by four gigantic squid.

The creatures, each well over a hundred feet from the tip of its huge, dome-shaped, broad-finned mantle to the ends of its longest tentacle pair, were wearing special harnesses attached by steel cables to four rings on the front of the pod. The monstrous creatures worked rhythmically, sucking huge quant.i.ties of water into their mantles, then contracting to eject the water out the back with immense force, causing themselves and the pod to surge forward. They responded to unspoken thought commands from Ombra, whose presence they felt intimately, and who could sense, through them, everything in the sea near the pod.

At the moment there was little to sense; save for a few small fish and the strange vessel pa.s.sing through, the sea here was open water. But soon enough that would change.

Soon enough, because on its present course, the pod would arrive at Mollusk Island.

CHAPTER 14.

THE OTHER TRAIN.

M OLLY GLANCED LEFT, THEN RIGHT; no one was looking. She eyed the ship, mentally measuring the distance. She took George's hand and counted softly. "Oneatwoa"

When Molly and George returned to London, Louise Aster was furious at them, especially Molly, for having left London without permission. But her anger evaporated when the children told her what they had learned in Oxford. Louise immediately sent a telegram to her husband in Paris to let him know that she and the two children would be joining him there on urgent business. George's parents were, as usual, traveling, but his governess readily gave permission for George to travel with the Asters.

Leonard Aster met Louise and the children at the train station in Paris and took them to his hotel suite. There he listened intently as Molly and George recounted what they had learned in Oxford: that the cryptic personal notices in the Observer had been placed by a Mr. Pan; that Pan and his wife had disappeared under suspicious circ.u.mstances; that their son had been sent to St. Norbert's; and that the boy's name was Peter. The last piece of news drew a gasp of surprise from Leonard.

When Molly and George were finished, Leonard quizzed them until he was satisfied that he had extracted every last bit of information from them. He then gave them a lecture about having gone to Oxford without permission. But he was so obviously impressed by their detective work that Molly could barely suppress a smile of pride.

It was nearly midnight when Leonard sent the children to bed. He then left the hotel to share their findings with the other senior Starcatchers meeting with him in Paris.

The next morning, Leonard, Louise, Molly, and George ate breakfast around a table in the hotel suite next to a window with a grand view of the Seine. Molly noticed that her father's trunk had been packed and placed by the door, but, following her father's lead, she said nothing until the waiter had left the suite.

The door clicked shut. Leonard said, "I sail today for Mollusk Island." Molly started to speak, but her father held up his hand to stop her. "I believe Peter is in grave danger," he said. "I never should have let him go back to the island. I had a nagging feeling that it was a mistake, but he was so eager to get back to his mates, and he'd done so much for us, I just couldn't bring myself to stop him. Now I wish I had."

"I don't understand," said Molly. "Why is he in danger?"

"The Others," said Leonard. "I fear they'll come back for him."

"But why?" asked George. "They were after the starstuff, and that was returned at Stonehenge. The Others know that. What good is Peter to them now?"

Leonard paused, as if deciding how much to reveal. "Peter may have certain abilities that could be very useful to them," he said.

"You mean flying?" said George. It bothered George that Peter could fly.

"No," said Molly, looking at her father. "It's not flying. It's the falling starstuff, isn't it? You think Peter can do what his father did."

Leonard smiled at his daughter's insight. "Yes," he said. "This Mr. Pan apparently had the ability to predict starstuff Falls. And if Peter is, in fact, Mr. Pan's sona"

"Then he might have the same ability," said Molly.

"He might," said Leonard. "He certainly has other unusual abilities. And if he can, in fact, predict starstuff Falls, he would be very valuable to the Others."

"But Peter would never help the Others!" said Molly.

"Not willingly, no," Leonard said softly. "But I doubt they would give him a choice."

Molly was silent for a moment. "So," she said, "it wasn't coincidence that Peter was put aboard the Never Land." She thought back to the day she had met Peter, both of them pa.s.sengers aboard an old, ill-fated ship carrying a mysterious trunk.