Nick didn’t push the issue; instead he led them both across the narrow causeway to the Cape—a much longer journey than it looked, and as the massive craft loomed before them, Johnnie-O could no longer deny the truth of what it was.

“So it is a spaceship!” And then he looked to Nick, both hopefully and doubtfully. “Can we make it go?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Nick told him. “Anyway, that’s not why we’re here.” And before Johnnie-O could ask any more questions, Nick said, “What do you know about Zach the Ripper?”

Johnnie-O stopped walking and instantly began to sink, but he didn’t seem to care. “You’re crazy! You’re crazier than Mary and the McGill put together!”

“You’re probably right.”

“If Zach the Ripper is here, then this is the one place in Everlost I don’t want to be!”

“So go back,” Nick told him simply, and kept moving forward. Johnnie-O pulled his feet out of the ground and followed, grumbling all the way.

Like any other Everlost legend, Nick knew there was no telling how much, if anything, about Zach the Ripper was true, but he knew that dealing with a ripper was dangerous business. Isaiah wasn’t the first one to speak of Zach the Ripper’s ability to inflict permanent damage on an Afterlight. If you were decapitated by Zach the Ripper, you stayed decapitated, and you’d be stuck having to carry your head around in a backpack, or under your arm, or dangling from the end of your hand by your hair. Whether or not you’d feel the pain of it was unknown—for although Afterlights weren’t supposed to feel physical pain, all bets were off when it came to an ecto-ripper.

For this reason, Nick was terrified as he approached the great spacecraft, but he didn’t show his fear to Johnnie-O. Johnnie-O was scared enough already. Somewhere in the distance, a stray dog in the living world began to bark, but they both ignored it.

“Look at that thing!” Johnnie-O said, staring at the massive craft. “It’s just standing there in midair!”

The orbiter and its rocket assembly were indeed floating about a hundred and fifty feet in the air. Nick knew there had once been a launchpad beneath it, but the shuttle launchpad was on tractor treads, and had long since been rolled away.

“It’s resting on the memory of a launchpad,” Nick told him.

“Wonder what Mary would have to say about that.”

Nick put on his best Mary voice. “In all things postmortem, the stubbornness of memory outweighs the so-called laws of physics. Best to report any antigravitational sightings to an authority.”

Johnnie-O stared at him. “You’re scary.”