Dangerous by Shannon Hale Read Free Book Online Page A

and that
    second one lasting five. The third when his knee touched mine,
    the fourth, when his thumb twitched on my cheek. The fifth
    when he breathed in through his nose, the sixth when a whisper
    of a moan escaped his throat. The seventh and eighth that had
    slowed, lingering.
    My mom said that my mind is a scanning machine that
    makes a copy of everything I see or read or hear. I wished I
    could delete those kiss files. But the memory sat over me, mock-
    ing, like that mouthy raven in Poe’s poem. Nevermore .
    Stupid bird.
    We watched a couple of movies before landing on a little
    island off the coast of Ecuador. The scenery was scrubby and
    bare, the sun relentlessly hot. But we only stayed long enough to
    put on astronaut suits. I felt kind of dorky, like a teenager still go-
    ing trick-or-treating. But Howell wanted us to have an astronaut
    experience. We even had to wear astronaut diapers.
    “This is a stupid place to build something expensive,” Ruth
    said, looking over the sea. “I’m from Louisiana, yo. I’ve seen
    what hurricanes can do.”
    “Actually this is the safest place,” I said. “Due to the Corio-
    lis force, hurricanes don’t develop on the equator.”
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    Shannon Hale
    Ruth smacked me on the shoulder—for correcting her, I
    guessed.
    “Back off, Ruthless,” I said, rubbing my arm.
    Jacques snorted at the nickname.
    “How’s about I call you One-Arm?” she said.
    I shrugged. “If it’s a good name, it’ll stick.”
    “Let’s call her One-Arm,” Ruth whispered to Jacques.
    “That’s stale, Ruthless ,” he said.
    So she hit Jacques.
    “Ruth, keep your hands to yourself,” Mi-sun said in a per-
    fect gentle-but-firm tone. “I won’t tell you again.”
    Ruth snorted but stopped hitting.
    From the island we took a helicopter out to sea. The sun
    was high—a hot brand melting through the blue. The helicop-
    ter was silent under the deafening stutter of the blades. Every
    face pressed to a window. Slowly the Beanstalk’s base came into
    view.
    The ocean platform resembled an oil rig with an Eiffel-
    like tower. Invisible from this distance was the six-centimeter-
    wide ribbon made of carbon nanotubes—lightweight and stron-
    ger than steel, the only known substance that could support the
    tension and pressure of climbing into space. The Earth end ran
    through the tower and attached to the ocean platform. The
    space end was attached to an orbiting asteroid thousands of ki-
    lometers away.
    We landed, and I was the first out. At the top of the tower
    waited the elevator car—a silver pod with wings of solar panels.
    I could make out the glint of the ribbon. I looked up, following
    the line into the sky, and got vertigo.
    “Hello, gorgeous,” I said.
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    Dangerous
    Wilder’s face swung toward me. I smiled.
    “I wasn’t talking to you.”
    “I didn’t think—” He shook his head and walked on.
    “Howell, can we get a peek inside the elevator?” I asked.
    Howell considered. “Well, since you’re here . . .”
    Jacques gave me the thumb’s-up.
    A metal cage elevator took us to the top of the tower where
    the pod rested, looking as dangerous as a boulder on a cliff.
    Howell and Dragon went into the pod first, and the rest of us
    followed. From the outside, the solar panels had made it look
    deceptively large, like long legs on a small-bodied spider. Inside
    it felt downright cozy. If the interior of a metal ball can be cozy.
    Six seats with harnesses were bolted to the floor around
    one half of the pod. Each faced a small window—just a slit, real-
    ly, like the ones on old castles that archers would shoot through.
    The cargo area took up the other half of the pod. In the center
    was a hollow metal pillar. The ribbon ran through it, and the
    pod used robotic lifters to climb the ribbon.
    “Companies pay us to transport their satellites,” Dragon
    was saying, “which in turn pays for the expense of building and
    running the Beanstalk. This trip we’re only carrying