Free The Lost City of Faar by D.J. MacHale

Press was intense at the controls, but I could tell by the look on his face that he was enjoying this. I didn’t blame him. I was too.
    â€œWhat is Grallion?” I asked.
    Oddly enough, I didn’t have to shout. The engines of the skimmer weren’t loud like a powerboat. Instead they gave off a steady, solid hum. Rather than the loud drone of an engine, most of what I heard was the hull flashing across the water. The water was amazingly smooth too, so we shot across it like ice skates on glass.
    â€œGrallion is the habitat where Spader lives,” said Uncle Press without taking his eyes off our adversary.
    â€œWhat’s his deal?” I asked.
    â€œHe’s what they call an aquaneer. All the habitats have a crew that keeps them moving safely over the water. It’s an important job. Spader’s good at it. He’s a good guy, too.”
    â€œYeah, but is he the Traveler from Cloral?”
    â€œLook!” he shouted.
    He pointed ahead of us and there on the horizon I saw our destination. At first it was just a hazy gray smudge that could have been an island. But the closer we got, the more I saw that the outline was too regular to be an island. No, this thing was man-made. And it was big. This was Grallion.
    Uncle Press gunned the throttle and easily caught up to Spader. I then realized what his strategy was. We had to lay back until we saw Grallion. But now that we knew where it was, the race was really on.
    â€œYou’ve got too much drag!” taunted Uncle Press at Spader. “We’ll beat you at three-quarters!”
    â€œBut you’ve got the extra weight, mate!” Spader shot back. “Even up!”
    Both guys gunned the throttle and the skimmers charged forward even faster. We hadn’t been at full speed up till now. Unbelievable.
    To be honest, I was less concerned about our race to decide who was going to buy sniggers than I was about our destination. Mark, remember the time we went to Manhattan on that school trip to visit the aircraft carrier Intrepid ? It was pretty impressive, right? Well, imagine approaching the Intrepid on the water in a rowboat. Can you picture that? Takes your breath away, doesn’t it? Well, now multiply the size of that aircraft carrier by about four hundred and you’d have Grallion.
    I kid you not, this was a floating island. As we sped toward it, I kept thinking that we’d be there any second. But we weren’t. With each passing moment this monster barge kept on getting bigger and bigger. It was about four stories high, but that’s not where the size was. This thing they called a habitat spread out before us for what seemed like a couple of miles. Because we were approaching head-on, I couldn’t tell how far back it went, but if the front end was any indication, this thing was the size of Stony Brook.
    â€œWe’ve got him now!” exclaimed Uncle Press with glee.
    I looked over to Spader’s skimmer to see we had pulled ahead by a few feet. Apparently the drag from his equipment caboose was a little bit more than the extra weight that I added to our skimmer.
    â€œThere’s the marker buoy!” Uncle Press said, pointing ahead.
    I looked to see there was a buoy floating about twenty yards off from the habitat. Beyond the buoy I saw that at the water line there was some kind of seagoing entrance to the barge. The opening was large enough to pilot small craftsinside. I could even make out other skimmers in there, along with a few small boats of various shape and design.
    â€œThe buoy marks the safety zone,” added Uncle Press. “Once you pass it, you’ve got to slow down. That’s our finish line.”
    We were only a few yards away from victory. I didn’t know which excited me more, knowing that we were about to win or looking up at Grallion as it loomed over us. Spader wasn’t giving up though. He coaxed a little more power out of his skimmer and pulled to within a