The Falcon's Feather Read online

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  Designed by Eva Absher-Schantz

  Codes and puzzles developed by Dr. Gareth Moore

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Trueit, Trudi Strain, author.

  Title: The falcon’s feather / Trudi Trueit.

  Description: Washington, DC : National Geographic Kids, [2019] | Series: Explorer Academy; [2] | Summary: “Cruz Coronado sets sail for the shores of Iceland and Norway aboard the Explorer Academy ship to continue his studies at sea. But, things take a turn while exploring the icy north, when he embarks on a dangerous mission to uncover the second piece of an important puzzle his mother left behind”– Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018036048 (print) | LCCN 2018042590 (ebook) | ISBN 9781426333064 (e-book) | ISBN 9781426333040 (hardback) | ISBN 9781426333057 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Explorers–Fiction. | Boarding schools–Fiction. | Schools–Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. | BISAC: JUVENILEFICTION/Action & Adventure / General. | JUVENILE FICTION/School & Education.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.T78124 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.T78124 Fal 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]–dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018036048

  Ebook ISBN 9781426333064

  v5.4

  a

  FOR JENNIE, WITH LOVE —T.T.

  PRAISE FOR THE NEBULA SECRET,

  THE FIRST BOOK IN THE EXPLORER ACADEMY SERIES

  “A FUN, exciting, and action-packed ride that kids will love.”

  –J.J. Abrams, Award-Winning Film and Television Creator, Writer, Producer, And Director

  “Inspires the next generation of curious kids to go out into our world and discover something unexpected.”

  —James Cameron, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and acclaimed filmmaker

  “This series opener from a new imprint of National Geographic is a fully packed high-tech adventure that offers both cool, educational facts about the planet and a diverse cast of fun characters.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Absolutely brilliant! Explorer Academy is a fabulous feast for mind and heart—a thrilling, inspiring journey with compelling characters, wondrous places, and the highest possible stakes. Just as there’s only one planet Earth, there’s only one series like this. Don’t wait another instant to enjoy this phenomenal adventure!”

  —T.A. Barron, author of the Merlin Saga

  “Nonstop action and a mix of full-color photographs and drawings throughout make this appealing to aspiring explorers and reluctant readers alike, and the cliffhanger ending ensures they’ll be coming back for more.”

  —School Library Journal

  “Explorer Academy is sure to awaken readers’ inner adventurer and curiosity about the world around them. But you don’t have to take my word for it—check out Cruz, Emmett, Sailor, and Lani’s adventures for yourself!”

  —LeVar Burton, actor, director, author, and host of the PBS children’s series Reading Rainbow

  “Sure to appeal to kids who love code cracking and mysteries with cutting-edge technology.”

  —Booklist

  “In the midst of fast-paced action, Explorer Academy captures the power of learning through exploration. The excitement of hands-on discovery is modeled in Cruz’s adventures, which encourages kids to take on the mind-set of explorers.”

  —Daniel Raven-Ellison, National Geographic Explorer and Guerrilla Geographer

  “…the book’s real strength rests in its adventure, as its heroes…tackle puzzles and simulated missions…Maps, letters, and puzzles bring the exploration to life, and back matter explores the ‘Truth behind the Fiction’…This exciting series opener introduces young readers to the joys of science and nature.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “This was the best book I have ever read…I felt like I was exploring with them!”

  —Miriam, age 10

  THE IMPOSSIBLE MISSIONS ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT SUCCEED.

  —Jacques Cousteau (1910–1997)

  64.1265° N   |   21.8174° W

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  The Truth Behind the Fiction

  Excerpt from The Double Helix

  Acknowledgments

  Credits

  A HEAD popped around the doorway of cabin 202, a thick hazelnut ponytail swinging from the top. “Aren’t you unpacked yet?”

  “Almost.” Cruz gave Sailor an uncertain grin. His heart skipped as he reached for the last item in his suitcase: a ball of puffed black carbon. He hoped the treasure inside wasn’t broken, but it probably was. How could it not be?

  If it hadn’t been damaged by Lani taking it apart, it most certainly had suffered from the overnight trip from Hawaii via mail drone. Cruz gently tapped the foam-like carbon until the seal broke, then carefully pulled the orb apart. Free of its cocoon, the palm-size silver dome looked all right. However, Cruz wouldn’t know for sure until he touched it and the holo-video of his mother and him as a younger child at the beach appeared. Humming “Here Comes the Sun,” he set the globe on his nightstand. He placed it between the aqua box with some of his mom’s things and Mell, his honeybee drone. Cruz hesitated. Maybe now wasn’t t
he best time to find out if the video was ruined. If it was, Lani would say it was a bad omen, a sign that his journey on Orion was doomed. Cruz wasn’t superstitious. Still, he couldn’t seem to get his finger to tap the dome.

  His friend and teammate Sailor York was checking out Cruz’s cabin. “You got a corner again. Sweet as! Bryndis and I are at the other end of the passage. Doesn’t this place make you feel like you’re seeing double?”

  She had a point. Most everything in the cozy, whitewashed maple stateroom was in pairs—two twin beds, two identical navy-and-white-pinstriped comforters with shams, two maple nightstands, side-by-side dressers, a pair of navy stuffed chairs—each with a penguin pillow—and two small writing desks and chairs. Cruz loved his desk. Made of polished blue lapis granite, the deep sapphire blue stone with golden flecks and soft white splatters reminded Cruz of photographs of the Milky Way. Standing like a miniature tent on each starry desk was a note from Explorer Academy president Dr. Regina Hightower. She’d written Cruz and his roommate, Emmett Lu, nearly identical messages, wishing them an exciting, educational, and life-changing journey. However, Cruz noticed his note contained one line that Emmett’s did not. Under her signature, Dr. Hightower had included her private cell phone number. In case you need anything, she’d scrawled beside it, then, Please be careful.

  The school’s president was one of the few people who knew about Cruz’s personal mission. He was looking for a formula developed by his mother before her death. Petra Coronado had discovered a serum that had the power to regenerate human cells—a breakthrough that could have led to curing hundreds of diseases. A founding scientist with the Synthesis, the top secret scientific branch of the Society, she had hit upon the formula while working on a pain medication for Nebula Pharmaceuticals. Once Nebula learned she’d created something that went far beyond their parameters, they’d ordered her to destroy the serum and formula. As his mother had explained in her digital holo-video journal, “The last thing a pharmaceutical company making billions of dollars selling drugs wants is for humanity to never need those drugs.”

  Cruz’s mother had been pressured into agreeing to Nebula’s demands, but not before engraving the formula into black marble, splitting the stone into eight pieces, and hiding the fragments of the cipher around the world. Fearing for her life, she made a holo-journal for Cruz with clues on how to find the pieces. Soon after, she died in a mysterious lab fire that had been ruled accidental. Cruz only recently discovered his mother’s death had been no accident. And worse? Nebula was to blame.

  Following the first clue in her journal, Cruz had deduced the first piece of the cipher was hidden in the base of his holo-projector back home in Hawaii. His best friend, Lani Kealoha, had removed the bottom plate of the dome and, sure enough, found the stone inside.

  Laser-etched with partial numbers and symbols, the black marble now hung on a lanyard around Cruz’s neck. It was pie-shaped and less than an inch across at the curved edge. The segment looked like a piece to a miniature, round puzzle. With two knobs on the right side and a curved indentation on the left, it was obvious the fragment was meant to interlock with two others. Finding it had been an amazing feat, but Cruz knew he had a long way to go to complete the cipher circle. Then there was Nebula. They were still out there, still determined to make sure he didn’t succeed. To help keep him safe, Dr. Hightower had increased the security on board Orion, and among the students, only Emmett and Sailor knew of Cruz’s mission.

  Sailor peered around cabin 202, dark eyes roving past the door that opened to the attached balcony, over to the closet, then, finally, to the closed bathroom door. “Is Emmett…?” She stuck out her tongue and pointed at her mouth, making what Cruz was sure was the international sign for hurling.

  “Heaving chunks? Nope. So far, so good. He went up to the fourth deck to check out the science tech lab. Between you and me, I think he needs help with Lumagine.”

  “Still working on that mind-control fabric, huh? Hasn’t he tried, like, twenty times?”

  “Twenty-six, actually. That’s nothing for Emmett. It took him fifty-seven attempts to invent his emoto-glasses.”

  “That’s what my mom would call super stick-to-itiveness.”

  Cruz noticed how Sailor kept a hand against the wall, as if worried that any minute a giant wave would capsize the boat. “He brought a bunch of extra seasick bands. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you wanted to borrow one—”

  “I’m fine,” she said, though she didn’t let go of the wall.

  “It takes a few days to get your sea legs,” he assured her. Living in Hawaii for the past seven—almost eight—years, Cruz had spent most of his life in or on the water. He knew the swaying motion of a 364-foot ship like Orion could take some getting used to, but he was sure everyone on his team would adjust. They’d already had some practice back at the Academy’s Computer Animated Virtual Experience simulator—the CAVE.

  “Taryn says there are snacks in the galley,” said Sailor. “We have a few minutes before our meeting. You want to grab something on the way?”

  Cruz was a little hungry. “Sure. One sec.” He snapped his suitcase shut and went to put it in the closet.

  “What’s this?” Sailor had picked up a postcard off Cruz’s desk.

  “It’s from my aunt.”

  She frowned. “How can you tell? She didn’t sign it. It says ‘Begin with the birth year of Peary’s first man,’ and then there’s a bunch of numbers.”

  “It’s a game we play. Aunt Marisol sends me coded messages on postcards. I decode them using books, art, or music, or whatever the clues lead to.”

  “Sweet as! So what does it say?”

  “Not sure yet. You can help me decode it if you want.”

  She rolled her eyes. “If I knew where to begin.”

  Cruz crossed the room to lock the veranda door. “Rule one: Always start with the picture.”

  Sailor flipped the card. The photo was of a round sea creature, its mottled brown-and-white head and creamy-colored tentacles cradled in a circular shell with wavy brown and white stripes. “I know this animal,” she cried. “It’s a mollusk, but I can’t think of the name…Not a hermit crab…”

  “Nautilus.”

  She snapped her fingers. “That’s it!”

  Cruz grinned. “And what book or song do you know that has a naut—”

  “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Nautilus is the name of Captain Nemo’s submarine.”

  He laughed. “I told Aunt Marisol she needs to make these harder.” Cruz grabbed his tablet computer and tucked it under his arm. He nodded toward the postcard. “Bring it with.”

  As they left the cabin, the door locked automatically behind them. Turning right out of his stateroom, Cruz followed Sailor down the narrow passage. A tall, sturdy security guard in a black jumpsuit stood near the elevator. Her ID tag read K. Dover. They said hi and she said hi, but her eyes lingered a bit longer on Cruz than on Sailor. Officer Dover tipped her reddish blond head at him as if to say, So you’re the one I’m here for. Cruz had thought having extra security on board would make him feel safer, but all it was doing so far was making him feel singled out.

  Beyond the elevator, the hall opened into a sunny atrium. On the other side of the ship were the faculty staterooms. Aunt Marisol’s cabin was the second door on the left side. Not “left,” he corrected himself, port. He needed to start thinking in boating terms. The bow was the front of the ship, and the stern, the back. You went fore, or forward, to the bow and aft, or backward, to the stern. If you stood facing the bow, the right side of the ship was known as starboard and the left was port. A pair of grand staircases curved up each side of the round atrium, their ornate brass rails leading to the lounge on the third deck. The open lounge had plenty of seating: plump red and blue chairs in groups of four for hanging out with friends, as well as straight-backed chairs clustered around taller tables for doing
homework. A large TV screen took up the back wall. The other three walls were glass, offering a sweeping view of wherever Orion was going. At the moment, the ship was navigating the murky greenish blue waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Potted lemon, lime, and orange trees flanked the doors leading to the outdoor bow deck. Lush green limbs drooped under the weight of ripe fruit. Certain they were fake, Cruz reached for a lemon.

  “Better not let Chef Kristos catch you or you’ll be washing dishes for months.”

  Cruz whirled around to see a young man in a navy shirt and matching pants. “I…I…only wanted to see if they were real,” he sputtered.

  “Did the same thing myself when I first came on board,” the man said, his Australian accent dropping the r so the last word sounded like “on bawd.” “If you think this is something, have a gander at the hydroponic garden on the observation deck. Chef Kristos grows most of the veggies we eat right here on the ship.”

  “I know!” said Sailor. “Do you think Chef Kristos would let me help take care of the plants? I miss my garden back home.”

  “Can’t hurt to ask.” The man rubbed his chin, and the emerald green eyes of a silver chameleon on his ring winked at them. “Do I detect a bit of the Kiwi there?”

  Sailor grinned. “I’m from Christchurch, New Zealand.”

  “Melbourne born and raised.”

  “Sweet as! I’m Sailor York, and this is Cruz Coronado. We’re explorers.”

  The man ruffled his messy crop of cinnamon hair. “Tripp Scarlatos. Marine biologist, aquatics director, and Ridley pilot.”

  “The mini sub?” Cruz’s ears perked up. “You drive the mini sub?”

  “Yip. Best job on the boat. In fact, I’m late for a meeting with Monsieur Legrand, and he does not like to be kept waiting, though I’m sure you know that. Hooroo!”