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  Mrs. Maple walked a few steps ahead of Diana. Her chic black hair remained frozen in a perfect bob despite the speediness of her stride. As usual, Diana found it hard to keep up. It had been her mother’s idea to enroll Diana in Winterpole’s junior-agent program, an internship that let kids prepare for an exciting career in eco-protection enforcement. Except exciting meant mind-numbing, and career meant paperwork.

  Despite her misgivings, Diana was not about to refuse an offer of employment at Winterpole. Her former boss and best friend, Vesuvia Piffle, had been locked up by the international rule-makers; and Diana’s mother, a high-ranking Winterpole agent, had barely looked at her daughter since Vesuvia’s incarceration.

  Diana’s lungs seized up whenever she thought about her mother’s diamond-hard glare. That judgmental shake of her head. Diana didn’t want to give her mom or anyone else reason to suspect she was still on Vesuvia’s side.

  As they reached the end of a long corridor, Diana’s mother opened a set of heavy steel doors and the two Maple women stepped through. The room beyond was vast and rectangular with a high arched roof. Every surface—walls, ceiling, and floor—was covered with blocks of icy-blue metal. In the center of the room was a desk made of deep blue stone, and on it was an enormous flatscreen monitor, which displayed the bald head of an older gentleman. But the face wasn’t a video as much a representation, lines of code that bent and danced as the visage moved. This indirect and unsettling method of communication was the Director of Winterpole’s preferred way of dictating instructions to his employees. Diana had never seen the Director in person, and neither had any of the other junior agents.

  Both side walls of the Director’s office were lined with risers, formed of smooth-cut blocks of honest-to-goodness ice. “Sit,” Diana’s mother hissed, pulling her to a spot where they had a good view of the Director.

  Diana winced as she sat down. The icy seat chilled her to the marrow.

  Before the desk stood a man wearing the standard three-piece suit of a Winterpole agent. He had trim hair, dark except for streaks of white on both sideburns, and was in the middle of a presentation to the Director and the assembled audience. Diana knew him to be one of Winterpole’s top operatives—and also the man who had made it his mission to arrest George Lane.

  Mister Snow cleared his throat and continued speaking.

  “Approximately two hours ago, at oh-six-hundred Greenwich mean time, our aerial scanners detected an intercontinental collision. A pink UPO, or unidentified plummeting object, made impact on the surface of the landmass dubbed by the outlaw George Lane as ‘the eighth continent.’ This collision knocked the former garbage patch into a southern-trending ocean current, and now the continent is on a doomsday course for Australia. Estimated time of impact is in just under forty-six hours. We must intercept the eighth continent and arrest George Lane before it’s too late.”

  When the Director replied, his voice was a dark and menacing mix of static and subwoofer. “Winterpole lacks jurisdiction beyond the seven continents. You know that, Snow. Every good agent knows that. Why would you bring me this information?”

  “Yes, Director,” Mister Snow bowed his head, “but do not forget Statute 76A-501—”

  “I never forget a statute!” the Director snapped. “76A-501: when one landmass threatens another, Winterpole may intervene, regardless of jurisdiction. Agents! Activate the Winterpole Crisis Clause.”

  A high-pitched honking noise filled the air. Diana and some of the other junior agents covered their ears. Panels opened along the walls, and a gaggle of white geese spilled out like rats escaping a flooded subway tunnel. “HONK! HONK! HOOOOOOONK!” they screeched. The stampede of geese flooded into the halls, filling all of Winterpole Headquarters with noise.

  Wincing, Diana looked at her mother. “Couldn’t we come up with a more efficient alarm system?”

  Diana’s mother hushed her impatiently.

  Straightening to his full height, Mister Snow smiled like he’d just won the world’s creepiest lottery. “Mister Director, agents of Winterpole, now that the Crisis Clause has been activated, I must report a disturbing fact. George Lane has threatened the sovereign continent of Australia. We must intervene and legislate his illegal continent. George Lane must be taken into custody. He must be brought to the Prison at the Pole.”

  “You will assemble a team, Mister Snow.” The Director sounded equally pleased. His digitized face grinned with satisfaction. “And good work.”

  Mister Snow bowed his head more deeply this time. Were those tears in his eyes? “Thank you, Director. I live to please you.”

  THE EIGHTH CONTINENT MOVED SOUTHWEST THROUGH THE PACIFIC OCEAN LIKE A TURTLE OF unimaginable size. Frothing white wake churned behind the former garbage patch in the shape of a V. Despite its great mass, the continent showed no sign of slowing down.

  Neither did the Lane family. They had worked straight through until morning to come up with a way to stop the eighth continent from crashing into Australia.

  Rick checked the Continent Collision Counter application he’d programmed on his family’s pocket tablets to keep track of how much time they had left. Just two days were remaining. Their predicament irritated Rick so much he almost couldn’t breathe. He had big plans for the eighth continent, plans he had spent the past six weeks preparing to execute. His frequent disagreements with Evie about what to do with their new homeland had set him back enough already. And a crisis like this didn’t just mean more delays; it meant that he might never see his dream of a thoughtful and unencumbered civilization realized. But this wasn’t even Rick’s focus at the moment. He had only one clear thing driving him: he had to find a solution, or else they’d be saying g’night to the people who say g’day.

  Rick’s mind sparked and skittered with ideas as dawn rose over the Pacific horizon, casting bright sunlight across the gentle hills of the eighth continent. Standing outside his father’s hastily constructed laboratory, he looked at the landscape he’d helped create. Dirt and rocks and grass stretched as far as the eye could see. A mountain range stood tall in the distance.

  Those were the things the eighth continent had. What it didn’t have yet were trees or leafy plants of any kind, and the only buildings were the small cluster of temporary wooden shelters his family had erected north of the beach.

  “Koo ka-koo ka-KOO!!!” From the open front door of the lab, Dad called like a bird. It was a cry the family used at times when it was urgent to have everyone rally to the same location. “Rick! Come here. I think I have something.”

  Rick hurried inside, where his father was standing next to 2-Tor. The bird held a quilt-sized sheet of white paper in his beak and the tips of his outstretched wings.

  Rick’s dad scribbled something furiously, then stepped back to show Rick the plan. “If we construct a giant desk fan and mount it on the continent, we may be able to blow our runaway home off-course.”

  Rick glanced across the room where Mom and Evie were considering an idea of their own. Mom was drawing on a chalkboard while thinking out loud. “The continent is like a dog off its leash. Maybe we could order a fleet of my Cleanaspot mega-vacuums to rendezvous with it. If they were all sucking water at full power, they might be able to slurp us off-course.”

  “I don’t know, Melinda. . . .” Dad piped up, looking over from the mess of scribbles on his paper. “Not a bad idea, but hmm . . . we need to get to the root of the problem.”

  It suddenly dawned on Rick that his father was right. “That’s . . . that’s it!” he exclaimed.

  His family turned to him in confusion. “What’s it?” Evie said.

  “What Dad just said. We have to get to the root of the problem. By rooting the eighth continent!”

  “Richard,” 2-Tor interrupted, “I’m not sure what you took your father’s meaning to be, but all he was suggesting was that—”

  Rick cut his tutor off. “Mom hi
t on it too when she said the continent was like a dog off its leash.” He looked at his mother in expectation but she just stared back at him blankly. Rick searched for a way to explain himself. “You guys all know that even if we could build a fan or a vacuum big enough to push us away from Australia, we’d still run the risk of getting stuck in another ocean current. We’re floating ducks out here unless we stop the eighth continent from moving permanently, and the only way to do that is by rooting the continent to the ocean floor.”

  “Oh, I get it,” said Dad. “That’s genius, son!”

  Mom’s eyes widened. “Brilliant! That’ll be the perfect way to avoid dirtying the oceans.”

  Evie raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Am I the only one here who still doesn’t know what he’s talking about?”

  “Yes,” said her parents in unison.

  Rick snatched Dad’s pen from his hand and started sketching his vision. “Think of the continent as a lily pad. We need to create a tether to connect it to the bottom of the ocean.”

  Rick’s parents nodded in agreement as he spoke, making Rick swell with pride.

  “The only issue will be finding a strong anchor that’s long enough to hold a whole continent in place.” He turned to his favorite crow. “2-Tor, how long will the root need to be?”

  “The ocean floor at our current location is fourteen thousand feet below sea level.”

  “Well, that’s not too far at all then, is it?” Dad exclaimed. “I think Rick may be on to something. Honey, what do you think? Is this a project Professor Doran could help us with?”

  Rick’s mother nodded. “Professor Doran! Now there’s a fine idea.”

  Dad nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Kids, listen up. Professor Doran is an old friend of your mother’s and mine. He’s a prize-winning botanist who specializes in super plants. If anyone knows how to grow a root big enough to anchor the eighth continent, it’s him. I’ll take you to his lab in Texas, down on the Mexican border.”

  “Yee-haw!” Evie hooted. “We’re going on another adventure.”

  “But Dad,” Rick interjected. “You can’t leave the eighth continent, or Winterpole will arrest you.”

  “Oh yeah, he’s right,” Evie agreed. “You can’t go with us.”

  Rick’s father seemed quite flustered by this inconvenience. “Hmm. Okay. Well then your mother will go with you. 2-Tor and I will stay here to keep an eye on the continent and try to come up with alternative solutions, in case something goes wrong down by the border.”

  Taking a deep breath, Rick steeled himself for the challenges that lay ahead.

  “Wark!” 2-Tor squawked. “Pop Quiz! What river serves as a natural aquatic border between Mexico and the US state of Texas?”

  “The Rio Grande!” Evie cheered, tugging on her mother’s arm. “Mom, can we leave right now?”

  “We better!” Mom said. “I pride myself on Cleanaspot’s efficiency. Why not our family’s, too?”

  IN A CROWDED, DARKENED CLASSROOM IN WINTER- POLE HEADQUARTERS, DIANA FOUGHT TO KEEP her eyelids from collapsing. The daily marathon lectures she endured in the junior-agent training program were so dull, she had already counted every tile on the ceiling (there were 256 of them). She had also named all 256. Her favorite tile was Fred, the faded white one over the boy who sat two desks in front of her. She didn’t remember the boy’s name, but she remembered Fred, because the tile had a blotchy brown stain of mysterious origin.

  Put simply, Diana would have rather been anywhere other than Winterpole Headquarters. She never should have listened to her mother when she’d sweetly suggested, “Why don’t you take some time off of school, honey?” It had sounded great at first—skipping a few classes at the International School for Exceptional Students, getting a chance to impress her mother with her commitment to Winterpole’s mission, finding a distraction from the recent debacle with Vesuvia—but the reality was that Diana still had to complete most of her regular schoolwork; and the more she learned about her mother’s employers, the more she felt just as baffled by their methods as she did by her ex-best friend’s.

  She tried to force herself to find the lessons interesting, but she just couldn’t do it. Even if she did agree with Winterpole’s primary objectives to protect the environment and regulate world matters, she could not stand their antiquated methods and ancient technology. Recently Winterpole had turned its focus to hunting down “problem people,” an assortment of rule breakers who ignored the bylaws.

  Winterpole’s internship coordinator and junior-agent instructor, Mister Skole, was leading this morning’s lecture. To help with his presentation, he enlisted the aid of a slide projector so ancient that it belonged in a museum, or perhaps a mummy’s tomb.

  “The man you see before you is one of Winterpole’s most annoying adversaries,” Mister Skole explained, his face bathed in the pale-blue light of the projector. “George Lane and his delinquent family frequently trespass on protected habitats and bird-nap endangered species. Most recently, they circumvented our statutes by creating their own continent right under our noses! He is the very worst. Next slide.” He said next slide, but there was no one to insert a new slide for him; he was operating the projector by himself.

  As the teacher fumbled with the old machine, Diana wondered if the Lanes had taken the time to savor their victory over Winterpole and Vesuvia. Although Diana was glad her ex-best friend hadn’t turned the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into New Miami, it didn’t feel good to be on the losing team. Come to think of it, that was probably why Mister Snow was so determined to arrest George Lane now.

  “Pay attention, class,” Mister Skole said, having finally settled the next slide into the projector. “This is Professor Nathaniel Doran, a vegetable smuggler who has been running an illegal botanical refuge in Texas for the past ten years.” A man in his early forties appeared on the screen, reclining on a large pile of loose broccoli. His warm eyes and cool smile made Diana think that he was either the most confident man on earth, or he really liked broccoli.

  “Alas, Winterpole has failed to locate his latest operation despite our best efforts. Maybe one of you kids will spearhead the mission to find Professor Doran and put a stop to his carrot corral!”

  None of these problem people appeared to have done anything particularly bad, which made the whole lecture seem irrelevant and unworthy of Diana’s attention. She wondered if it was possible to fall asleep with her eyes open. Maybe she was sleeping right now, and she just didn’t know it. Her eyelids lowered slowly.

  Mister Skole slapped his finger against the projection of the next photo, making Diana jump. The slide that followed was an impressive landscape of the African veld. A woman stood center frame, leaning against a crossbow the size of a bazooka. She was draped in multi-colored animal hides, which did little to conceal the sculpted muscles of her Amazonian figure. A dead zebra lay at her feet, its white stripes brown with dirt. Some of the junior agents gasped audibly. This was the first “problem person” who looked like she deserved to be locked away by Winterpole. Mister Skole dubbed her the Big Game Huntress.

  Before Diana could really take in the image, Mister Skole aggressively changed slides. “Next! Those pathetic polluters the Condo Corporation!” Diana’s stomach dropped. She knew what was coming. Sure enough, her teacher gestured toward a very unflattering photo of Vesuvia. “We may have apprehended the minuscule mastermind of that rotten bunch, but the threat is far from over.” Now Diana was firmly awake. She felt the eyes of her classmates on her. Everyone knew about her friendship with Vesuvia.

  It was impossible for Diana to be both her mother’s spy among the junior agents and a traitor in cahoots with the enemy, but somehow her classmates still treated her like she was both.

  The harsh glares of her classmates made it hard for Diana to follow the rest of Mister Skole’s presentation. The problem people started to blur together.

  “Now,
students”—Mister Skole turned to face the class—“who can tell me which of these individuals is the biggest threat to Winterpole? Diana Maple?”

  Diana looked up from her notes. “The biggest threat? Um . . . hmm . . . irrelevance?”

  Judging by Mister Skole’s expression, he wasn’t amused by Diana’s attempt to lighten the situation. The boy at the desk next to Diana snapped his hand in the air. Mister Skole smiled in relief. “Yes, Benjamin?”

  Benjamin Nagg was one of Diana’s fellow junior agent trainees. He had chilling blue eyes that fit right in at Winterpole, and slick black hair that formed a shiny helmet around his overly large head. He was so skinny and pale he almost looked sickly, but when he spoke, he sounded commanding and self-important.

  “The biggest threat to Winterpole is George Lane and his children, Mister Skole.”

  Diana’s teacher beamed at Benjamin. “Very good, Mister Nagg.”

  The boy did not let up. “Anyone who would flaunt his disregard for Winterpole statutes as gratuitously as that man must be stopped. It is outrageous that he and his family would exploit loopholes the way they have. We should make an example of the Lanes, as we did the CEO of the Condo Corporation.” Benjamin cast a sidelong glance at Diana when he said that last bit. Diana scowled.

  “Eloquently put, Benjamin.” Mister Skole’s smile grew even wider.

  Benjamin nodded. “Not everyone can be the boss’s child, Mister Skole, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all know a thing or two . . . thousand.”

  Diana nearly growled. She didn’t ask to be the daughter of the Secretary of Enforcement. She hated it! Why did Benjamin have it out for her?

  Dejected and annoyed, Diana stared out the classroom window into the hallway beyond. Suddenly, Mister Snow walked past the classroom with a retinue of armored enforcement agents—her mother’s people. Diana realized that these must be the agents the Director had dispatched to apprehend George Lane from his formerly un-legislate-able home on the eighth continent.