Paul held out his hands in surrender. “All right, all right, all right. Look, here’s what we’ll do. We sit here and wait for the door to open again. When it does, we’ll peek in and see what we see—all while making sure we don’t let anything slice our heads off or smash our faces in. Ya know, just for kicks. Like I’ve said before, we wouldn’t want to mess up this pretty face of mine or you know the ladies would be devastated.”

Sofia groaned.

“That works for me,” Tick said. “If this door opens every half-hour or whatever, we don’t need to rush it. Next time, let’s just lean in real quick and take a look around. Hopefully there’ll be a walkway with a railing. If not, we’ll decide what to do from there.”

“Deal,” Paul said.

“Who’s going to poke their head in?” Sofia asked.

“All of us—it looks big enough,” Tick said. “Sofia, you look left. Paul, you look straight ahead. I’ll look to the right—and make sure you look down, too. Get in line and let’s get ready. Who knows when it’ll open next.”

They lined up in the order Tick had indicated and stood just inches from the invisible door in the shiny curved glass. The seconds dragged into minutes as Tick stared at his distorted reflection, trying to stay focused so he could lean forward the instant things changed. The sun had moved further west, but it still shone down with ruthless heat.

“What if the door closes before we pull out?” Paul said after what seemed like an hour of waiting.

Tick rolled his shoulders, surprised at how stiff his muscles were, tensed as he kept himself prepared to move. His injuries from the metaspides still stung as well. “Just count to three inside your head then pull back. It stayed open at least—”

The humming sound cut him off.

Tick tried not to blink as he stared at the unbelievable sight of the doorway opening. Like liquid silver, the glass melted and disappeared into itself, dropping in a straight line until a perfect rectangle once again revealed the inside of the tube.

“Now!” Tick said, but the other two were already leaning forward with him.

Everything felt different—the vrrmmmmm sound wasn’t as loud and nothing shook. Even as Tick’s head passed through the opening, he could see that no train or anything else was close by. Mentally counting to three, he stared across the tube and took it all in, hoping his friends were doing the same.