The Secret of Ka by Christopher Pike Page A

ask the man who made it."
    "How do you know it was a man? Maybe it was a woman."
    "Maybe it was a team of men and women."
    "Ha! The boy is finally learning to be diplomatic."
    "Don't call me a boy."
    "How old are you really?" I asked.
    He did not answer and I thought he was embarrassed to admit that he had lied earlier. I couldn't see him very well in the dark. I certainly couldn't read his expression. But I saw his hand shaking.
    "Sara!" he cried. "It's spinning!"
    "The pointer?" I asked, checking my own compass, which was still pointed north.
    "Come look." He stopped and swung the compass around his body. He took a step back. "It's strongest here."
    I ran to his side. Studying his compass, I saw that he was not exaggerating—the arrow was all over the place. Then I realized mine was spinning, too.
    The carpet fluttered against my chest!
    "I think we've found one!" I exclaimed.
    "But we just started looking. How is it possible?"
    I did not answer, but since I had found the carpet—especially since it had begun to jump around the hotel room—I had wanted to take it down to the beach. To this beach in particular, almost as if I knew the spot was special.
    We wasted no time spreading the carpet on the sand. Then ... nothing happened, it just lay there. I could hear the disappointment in Amesh's voice when he said, "Maybe it needs a spell to work, after all."
    "Not so fast. We were about thirty feet apart and walking parallel with each other when your compass began to dance. But my compass didn't react until I moved to where you were standing."
    "So?"
    "What if this ley line doesn't run toward the water? For all we know it runs down the beach. It might be important to find exactly where it's headed and align the carpet in that direction."
    Amesh nodded. "Good idea. We'll scan the area."
    Leaving the carpet as a focal point, we walked up and down the beach, trying to find where our compasses spun the most. We finally decided that the ley line led farther down the beach—away from the hotel—but at a slight angle that would eventually take it out over the water.
    We hurried back to the carpet and aligned it as carefully as we could. The change was instantaneous. I felt a magnetic charge in the air.
    Yet the carpet—although it quivered on the sand—did not float into the air. Amesh and I knelt beside it, and for the first time I took out a small flashlight. In the light we saw that the central three tassels were standing straight up. The same was true of the rear of the carpet, which meant all together six tassels had come alive.
    I stared at Amesh across the carpet.
    "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked.
    He nodded. "They look like controls."
    I turned off the flashlight—I did not want to disturb the carpet's reaction to the stars—and sat on the front of the carpet that faced the water. My taking charge annoyed Amesh.
    "I think I should be the first one to fly it," he said.
    "Why?"
    "I know how to drive a car."
    "So do I." My dad had given me a few illegal lessons. "But I don't think that's going to help us fly this baby."
    "Sara, you have no right..."
    "Amesh, get on the back and relax. I know what I'm doing."
    "How can you know?" he asked, reluctantly obeying.
    "It's just a feeling I have."
    I pulled back on the front middle tassel—one of the three on my end of the carpet that were standing up—and the carpet immediately stiffened and gently bobbed off the sand. Still, it went no higher than an inch, not even when I pulled all the way back on the tassel. It was only when I pulled back on the tassel to its right that we began to gain altitude.
    "Glory be to Allah!" Amesh gasped.
    I laughed. "Amen!"
    When we were six feet above the sand, I eased the central tassel forward, but nothing happened. It made me wonder if the tassels worked together like the clutch and gears in a car.
    I experimented a minute and discovered that the central tassel was the clutch. It caused the tassels to the right and left of it to