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toward the distant surface of the water.
Now I just need to find a place to hide before the sentinel emerges from the
tunnel.
    Sailing up out of the fissure, I turn toward the west and follow
the seafloor, looking for a cluster of rocks, or a coral shelf, or anything at
all that might conceal me. I speed across the flat sandy ground, listening for
the sound of a torpedo launching behind me. The sentinel can surely outrun me
in open water. My only advantage is the small head start I got when I exited
the fissure.
    Suddenly the seafloor disappears below me and I find myself sailing
over a black bottomless trench. The darkness seems to reach up all around me,
trying to swallow me whole.
    I have only seconds to choose between the certain death that lies
behind me and the possible death that lies beneath me.
    I dive down into the depths.
    Gliding deeper into the murky void, I can no longer see the mouth
of the trench above me. My sunstar’s light shines into the blackness of the
trench, revealing nothing but empty water in all directions. But as long as I
can’t see the top of the trench, the sentinel shouldn’t be able to see me.
    I sail back and forth in a tiny pattern, just keeping the air
flowing while I wait. I wonder how long I should stay down here. For all I
know, the sentinel is just waiting for me up there.
    Then I see something rising up from below me, a deeper darkness
within the darkness. It’s so big that I can’t see where it starts and where it
stops. The water swells up, knocking me back in the wake of the massive moving
shadow.
    I catch a glimpse of what look like giant green scales before I am
knocked back again by another swell of water. The immense shadow disappears
back into the trench, leaving me all alone, staring wide-eyed into the
darkness.
    Whatever that was, I don’t want to wait for it to come back. I
sail back up to the top of the trench. There is no sign of the sentinel in any
direction. Checking my compass, I turn back to the west in search of Skeleton
Reef.
    I sail through the endless open sea, the sunstar casting a cone of
light in front of me.
    The seabed is sandy and featureless, and I feel as if I have been
pedaling for hours. I check my compass to make sure I am still traveling west
and not merely going in circles.
    Up ahead a faint twinkling light appears in the darkness. As I
sail closer, more and more tiny lights come into view. Soon there are hundreds
of them, spread across the darkness like stars in the night sky.
    The lights are lavender-colored, bobbing gently up and down. I can
see long flowing tendrils waving beneath them. Lantern jellies! My
father told me about them once. They are the most beautiful creatures in the
sea—but they are deadly to the touch.
    The bloom of jellies heads toward me. It’s too late to turn
around, so I hold perfectly still and let them glide by. The flickering lights
cast patterns on the inner walls of the sub as they pass. Their glowing bodies
are so densely packed together, I can no longer see the water at all; but they
part in front of me, avoiding the light of the sunstar. I hold my breath as the
long tentacles of an especially large jelly sweep over the glass in front of my
face.
    The jellies are becoming sparser now. The last of the glowing
lights passes by me. The lavender glow recedes and I am once again sailing into
the empty midnight blue.
    I’m checking my compass again when I hear a sudden whoosh of bubbles from behind me. My mind races. The sentinel is back! There’s
nowhere to hide . . . I have to outmaneuver it.
    I pull back hard on the handlebars, turning sharply to the right
as I accelerate to spin into a corkscrew loop. I’m about to turn into the next
loop when I feel a bump from behind me and I go spinning around again in the
darkness, losing my grip on the handlebars. As I struggle to regain my balance,
I see two giant yellow eyes staring at me through the window.
    It’s not the sentinel. It’s a serpent— a baby leviathan