Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition by Diane Duane Page A

galaxy.” Darryl looked Kit over approvingly. “Got yourself some tan.”
    “Nearly got myself a scorched hide,” Kit said. “Our old ‘friend’ again.”
    Darryl nodded, his grin fading a little. “Well, we’re just going to have to screw up Its plans one more time.”
    “Yeah, and then we can get back to business,” Kit said, and looked up at the sky. “Like the M—”
    “ The Martian thing! ” Nita and Dairine and Darryl more or less shouted in chorus, leaving Sker’ret and Filif and Roshaun and Ronan all looking confused.
    “You crack me up,” Darryl said, and whacked Kit in the shoulder in a friendly way. “Here we’ve got the whole universe going to pieces around our ears, and all you can think about is going hunting for ancient Martian princesses in skimpy clothes.” He guffawed.
    “Will you cut it out? It’s not about princesses! That’s just in a book!” Kit said, but no one was listening. There was too much laughing going on. “Come on, Darryl, give it a rest!”
    “Okay, never mind,” Darryl said, “you’re off the hook till we get present business sorted out. I can’t believe how full my manual’s gotten in the past few days. Just look at it—”
    To Nita’s surprise, Darryl reached not into a nearby space pocket for his manual but into the front pocket of his jeans. Dairine stared at what Darryl brought out. To all appearances it was a sleek rectangular white-and-silver MP3 player, but as he turned it toward them, Nita could see that the apple on its little blue-glowing screen had no bite out of it.
    “That is too slick! ” Dairine said. Spot came up from behind and put some eyes up to goggle in a friendly way at the WizPod.
    “Yeah,” Darryl said. He pulled it open—which shouldn’t have been possible—until it looked like a little book, and then opened it out again, and again, and yet again, until it was more like a flat-screen monitor than anything else, but one you could hold in your hands. Manual data started scrolling down its surface, imagery and spells together. “It’s got all the usual spell-storage and display options,” Darryl said. “ And it carries my tunes. Like I’ve got time for music when this thing’s got twenty times the content, all of a sudden…” He grinned as he folded it up again.
    Nita looked over at S’reee as a thought occurred to her. “Are there any other Seniors on Earth who were Seniors before but’ll still be functioning when things go bad?”
    “No,” S’reee said.
    “Oh, wow,” Nita said. “How that must be making you feel…”
    “Yes. And just when I was starting to relax about being a Senior,” S’reee said, sounding briefly mournful. “But all we can do now is dive deep and do the best we can on short notice, even if we’re not sure we have enough data. That said”—S’reee looked less troubled—”we’ve been given access to a lot more power than we’ve ever had. It’s hard to feel so uncertain when you do a wizardry and it just jumps out of you like a waterspout.”
    “Yeah,” Nita said, “I noticed.” Thirty minutes or so ago, when they’d built the wizardry to transit the group to the Moon, it had gone together in record time, and had left no one even slightly tired—unusual for a fairly complex spell. Nita’s first reaction had been exhilaration. But then she’d started feeling uneasy, as if something she’d always been used to paying full price for was now suddenly on sale. What if it’s actually a sign that the thing you’re buying is about to go permanently out of stock?
    “Well, we’re going to need that extra power, because things are already happening out there,” S’reee said. “The effects of the unnatural expansion are spreading fast.” She looked across the crater at the jumble of bubbles of air. They were splitting and moving around, bumping into each other and merging, as wizards got together to lay their plans. “There are already pockets of space where wizardry isn’t