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from Olivia and the occasional nauseous burp from Ducky), as the train’s and the elevator’s speeds begin to match up. And then, suddenly, this crazy speeding bullet from outer space has actually docked with our car. That’s when Alan ushers us over into the elevator. Honestly, I want it to feel like a more momentous experience—this moving from our past world to the futuristic spacecraft that will shuttle us to our doom—but the ride is (yes, Dad) so smooth that I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel just like walking from business class to the snack car.
    Once we’re all aboard, the door whooshes shut and the elevator detaches from the train. Suddenly we’re shooting up into the sky, using the built-up kinetic energy from the trip down.
    “So,” Dad explains, “from here we’ll deboard at the satellite station, which will take us counterclockwise around the Earth on about a twelve-hour”—Dad looks to Alan for confirmation, who merely grunts—“yes, about a twelve-hour journey, until we’re above Cape Crozier. Then we’ll dock with another mag-rail train, and we’re home free.” I frown. “Or, er,” my dad corrects, “in prison.”
    “It sure is a long way down,” Ducky says, looking out the window the way a condemned prisoner might look at the guillotine.
    “It is at that, Donald,” Dad says. “But you shouldn’t worry. These cable cars hardly ever fail.”
    “ Hardly ever?” Ducky asks. His face is changing colors faster than a chameleon on a speed bender.
    “These cables are very sturdy,” Dad replies, “and most of the electricity on board is generated by the motion along it. So malfunctions and explosions are rare.”
    “Explosions?” Ducky is a quivering ball of lunchroom-quality mac ’n’ cheez.
    “You’re getting scared out of proportion with the risk,” Dad says, frustrated by Ducky’s seeming lack of pragmatism. “It’s not as if we’re going to need to jump out the window or anything. Besides, there are evacuation procedures. I can go over them with you if you’d like.” Dad points to one of the walls, which has a bright red panel with the word EMERGENCY in big block letters. Underneath the panel is a lever. “Thatwould be where you’ll find all the equipment you would need for a safe evacuation.”
    “What’s in it?” Ducky asks, hardly sounding reassured.
    “Well, some sort of parachute device, I would imagine,” Dad muses. “I don’t know how they grade for high altitudes. Perhaps something that could survive atmospheric reentry? I’ve read about some metallic mesh fabrics that NASA has been working with . . .”
    “We could always just fly down on capes,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.
    Ducky gives me a long cold stare. “Elvie, that’s not even a little funny,” he tells me.
    When Ducky and I had just graduated from fourth grade, Dad planned a day trip with us where he said he was taking us to the amusement park on the boardwalk down the shore. Instead (and really, in retrospect, this should have come as no surprise), Dad had signed us all up for a daylong training seminar on emergency evacuation scenarios. The only “event” that Dad could convince Ducky to participate in—and again, I stress that we were both nine —was the building jump, and that was only because they used gliding capes, which Dad managed to convince Ducky would make him look like a superhero. The capes, which made us all look like flying squirrels more than anything, were, in theory, meant to help an evacuee of a troubled high-rise ride the wind currents safely all the way down to the ground. The capes used sensors imbedded in the nylon fabric to automatically adjust tensile strength, creating the appropriate lift and drag as you “flew,” so they were supposed to be foolproof. They did not, it turned out,end up being Ducky-proof. Poor old Duck managed to flail around for a few seconds before sailing right past the safety net and dropping like a stone to the