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leave now.”
    He got up off the floor and walked over to her on unsteady
feet. Carly looked out the window once again. It was just mind over
matter. Thinking of jumping out of a window on the fifty-fourth floor definitely seemed
insane, but she knew that logically, she would not fall to the
ground. She could see all sorts of things and people already
floating around. It was just a matter of wrapping her mind around
the whole idea of it.
    The kid looked terrified , but at least he wasn’t running away from her. She grabbed
him around the waist and hoisted them both onto the ledge. Before
he could change his mind, she made the leap. The kid clutched on to
her tighter, and she heard a scream in the office. Once in the air,
they immediately started to float. Carly exhaled in relief,
realizing she had been holding her breath the whole
time.
    “ See ? There we go. No
biggie, right? Now, just don’t look down.”
    The boy clung to her for dear life , even though she knew he would float just as she was
doing. As gravity completely disappeared, she would continue to
rise, but for the moment, she was OK.
    Now what?
     
    ***
     
    Henry finally got settled in his seat and opened a book his
father Jim Iverson had given
him to read during his flight. The plane had just finished its
preflight checklist and was rolling down the runway. The airport he
was using was close to the NASA building, and when Henry looked out
the window, he gasped as he saw objects starting to float up in the
air.
    “ Oh , no.”
    He knew immediately what must be
happening around him. This airplane was now officially a deathtrap.
If he stayed on it, if any of them stayed on it, it would be
certain death for all of them.
    He stood up .
“Something weird is going on outside with the gravity. We need to
get off this plane. As soon as it levels off in the air, we need to
get in our parachutes and get off this thing.”
    Most everyone on the airplane looked at Henry as if he were an insane person. He
couldn’t blame them; he was a sixteen-year-old kid asking them all
to jump out of an airplane.
    Just then , the captain
of the plane made an announcement. “Attention, passengers, we are
facing some unusual problems with the airplane. This is an
emergency. We need all passengers to follow proper procedures to
disembark. The robot flight attendants will help you in any way
they can.”
    Henry breathed a sigh of relief , knowing that all the passengers would find their way
off the plane along with him.
    “ Go od call, kid,” the
guy beside him said.
    A
couple of robot flight
attendants came down the aisles and started handing out
parachutes . Henry felt sick to his stomach, and he wished that his
father was there with him. He could hope only that his father was
somewhere safe and out of harm’s way. Henry had to assume he was at
work at the NASA building, and he wondered how safe it was in there
for everyone. If his father died in this crisis, Henry wasn’t sure
how he would handle it. It occurred to Henry quite briefly that
this disaster could be his father’s fault. They had never discussed
again what he had overheard in the office between Bill and his
father. Did this crisis have something to do with that? He hoped
not, for everyone’s sake.
    Henry started to strap himself into the parachute and make
his way to the exit. He had to admit that he was terrified. The
idea of jumping out of an airplane had never seemed very appealing
to him. Many did it as a recreational sport , but Henry was never one for extreme sports. He
preferred to keep his feet on the ground at all times. This would
be very interesting indeed.
    One by one , the robot
flight attendants led people off the plane. They jumped into the
air, believing they would fall to the ground. To everyone’s
surprise, they didn’t. They just floated in midair. Henry smiled.
It was the gravity. Something was wrong with it. It had to have
something to do with what his father was working on.
    It was Henry’s