Omega City Page 6

  “Is there anything else he invented?” I asked carefully. The birth of ice, the birth of ice . . . “Some kind of cool . . . refrigerator? Or what is it called when you freeze people and then bring them back to life?”

  “Cryogenic freezing?” Dad sat back on his heels, a wistful look on his face. “Who knows, sweetheart? Who knows what we lost when we lost him? Dr. Underberg was a brilliant man, dedicated to the betterment of the human race. He fought to end the nuclear arms race, to create clean, renewable energies, technologies that would help humans live with fewer resources or in places we never thought we could: deserts, under the sea, even in outer space . . .” He trailed off. “The possibilities are endless.”

  I slumped. And what were the possibilities regarding ice?

  “But Underberg thought it was all just a dream. He was certain humanity would destroy itself before we ever had a chance to progress that far. You don’t know what it was like, to live during the Cold War. I hope you guys never do. Every day people like Dr. Underberg were certain we were about to get bombed into extinction by the Russians, or vice versa. Even when I was younger, that possibility haunted us.” He sighed. “Do you remember when we went to visit Underberg’s Solar Park the other day?”

  I perked up at the words. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eric and Savannah lean in, too.

  “There was that plaque there, with his speech from the dedication. Let me see if I have this right,” Dad said. “Something about how the human race holds the power to bring itself into the light or into the darkness.”

  “To let the sun rise or set on the face of history,” I continued. I’d seen that plaque a million times.

  “That’s the one.” Dad moved down to the other end of the tent, and as soon as his back was turned, Eric lobbed the head lamp into my lap.

  “Hey!” he whispered as I scurried up to meet him on the porch. “Isn’t that what the riddle said? Something about the sun setting on the Earth?”

  I nodded, surprised that he’d actually memorized it. What’s more, he was out here, listening to me and Dad talk instead of rushing through his chores, then beelining for his video games. I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain.

  Whatever we were looking for, we had to be on the right track. The last line of Dr. Underberg’s speech on the Solar Park plaque was about how his dream of a better future had become a reality. It sounded like he was talking about building a nice park for his hometown, but what if it was something more? What if he was talking about a battery that would help fix the environment and end wars over oil?

  “Just don’t let this one blow it with all her gangster talk.” Eric gestured to Savannah. “Iced? Really?”

  She glared at him. “You have a better idea?”

  “How could anything possibly beat mobsters and cryogenics?”

  I giggled and she turned to me. “Are you seriously taking his side?”

  “He does have a point,” I admitted. And I’d be more than happy to take his side now that he was finally taking mine.

  “Gillian, we’re following a treasure map written by a mad scientist to a model of Pluto. Nothing is off-limits.”

  “Okay. You have a point, too.” I smiled at her, but she sniffed and looked away.

  Eric rolled his eyes and began putting our camping supplies back in the crate, then suddenly froze. “Gills,” he whispered. “It’s degrees!”

  “What?”

  He was crouched on the porch, his old compass cradled in his hand. “Degrees! Like degrees of temperature. Ice freezes at thirty-two degrees.”

  The birth of ice . . . that made sense. “But how does that help?”

  He showed me the face of the compass and pointed to a ring of tiny numbers marching around the outside. “Don’t you see? Directions have degrees, too. We use them in sailing. Like zero degrees is due north and one hundred eighty degrees is south.”

  “So what is thirty-two?”

  “Kinda north by northeast . . .”

  “Wait,” I said. “That’s Fahrenheit. Wouldn’t a scientist use Celsius or something? Zero is the freezing point of water in Celsius.”

  “So that would be north,” Eric said. “By degrees.” Which led us back into northern Pennsylvania.

  Savannah mumbled something.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oh, now you want my opinion?” she snapped. The light was failing but I could see well enough to catch the spark of anger in her eyes.

  “Well, if you have actual information to give,” Eric said.

  “As a matter of fact, Eric, I do.” She straightened. “The Kelvin scale—scientists usually use that. And the freezing point of water in Kelvin is 273.15 degrees.”

  “Hey, Dad? We’ll be right back. Have to make a phone call.” I raced up the steps and into the cottage, with Eric and Savannah right behind.

  “Noland residence,” said the pleasant-sounding woman who answered the phone.

  “Hi, Mrs. Noland,” I said. “Can I speak to Howard? This is Gillian Seagret. From school,” I added.

  “Howard?” Mrs. Noland said. “Really?” But she got him anyway.

  “Am I on speakerphone?” he asked when he came on the line.

  “Yes.” I pressed the button.

  “Who is there?”

  “Me and Eric and Savannah,” I replied.

  “No one else?”

  “No one else, Howard,” Sav said, annoyed. “Just tell him.”

  “Do you have your GPS? Try plugging in the distance at the following angle . . .” I trailed off and looked at Eric for help.

  “273.15 degrees,” Eric said. “It should be slightly north of due west.”

  Howard was silent on the other end for a second. “That’s the Deep Creek Lake area,” he reported.

  Eric and I stared at each other. He groaned, but a thrill shot through my body. Deep Creek Lake was where Dad had taken us when we went off grid. I bet it was because the area had something to do with Dr. Underberg.

  “That’s like an hour away,” Eric said. “It’s way too far for our bikes.”

  “We could tell Dad it was for a school project. The bird . . . pollution thing.”

  “I’ll back you up, Gillian,” said Savannah, her voice soft. “If we find something, fine. If not, we tried.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Howard said over the phone. “It’ll be really small. Three inches.”

  “If it’s even there anymore,” Eric pointed out.

  I looked at Eric, willing him to understand.

  He took a deep breath. “I just don’t want you thinking you can save the day. And I really don’t want Dad to get all paranoid, which you know he’ll do if he figures out why we’re really out there.”

  “I’ll ask my brother to drive us.” Howard’s voice broke in over the phone. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  Savannah gave a little hop and clapped her hands together. “Yes! That’s an amazing idea! Thank you, Howard!”

  “What are you going to tell him?” Eric asked. “I don’t think he buys that we’re doing a bird poop project.”

  “Oh, hush,” said Savannah, smiling like it was her birthday. “We’re in.”

  We made arrangements for Nate and Howard to pick us up in the morning, then went out to tell Dad about our new “school project.”

  “Deep Creek Lake, huh?” he asked, packing away the last of the camping gear. “What a coincidence. Fiona was talking about it today, too. That’s actually what reminded me to check on our camping gear.”

  “Really,” my brother said flatly.

  “Yep,” Dad said. “She’s a pretty good researcher, for a beginner. She told me something even I didn’t know—apparently, Dr. Underberg’s father used to have a cabin out there.”

  “Really?” I said, my tone far more interested than Eric’s. If Fiona was asking about the forest, maybe she knew another way to get to the treasure without the missing diary page. What if we’d gone through all of t
hat trouble to calculate the location and it was really just an old family cabin? Worse, what if I dragged everyone out there and Fiona had already taken the battery?

  “She said it’s impossible to find, though.”

  That was a relief.

  “The road doesn’t even exist anymore.”

  Nonexistent road, check. Good thing we had the exact coordinates.

  “Did she, um, have any idea how to find it?” Eric asked.

  “No. Seemed pretty frustrated, too.” Dad shrugged. “Maybe we’ll go look for his cabin next summer.”

  Or maybe we’d find it a lot sooner than that.

  8

  THE MISSING MOON

  WHEN NATE’S RED PICKUP PULLED IN TO OUR DRIVEWAY ON SATURDAY morning, the General Tso’s Pizza sign was nowhere to be seen. I almost missed it. Savannah was already waiting with us on the porch, adjusting the zipper of her pink velour jacket and smoothing her hair. I think she’d even put on mascara. I was just wearing jeans and a long-sleeve top. Eric had found a bit of rope and was practicing his sailing knots, which was something I hadn’t seen him do since Dad sold off his dinghy and made us live in a tent.

  Savannah, Eric, and I approached the truck as Howard got out of the passenger side and pulled the seat forward so we could all climb in back. “I read the Underberg book last night,” he said instead of greeting us. “All of it—even the parts that aren’t about the space program.”

  “Yay?” I climbed in the backseat.

  “You know, Howard,” Savannah said sweetly, “if you want to talk to Gillian about the book, I’d be happy to sit shotgun and let you have my seat.”

  No! I mouthed at her. I could already imagine thirty miles of space talk.

  “Forget it,” said Nate. He was sitting up front, his hands draped casually over the steering wheel. “Howard sits up here. I need him to navigate.”

  Savannah pouted, then hopped on the bench next to me. Eric shook his head and climbed in last.

  On the road, Savannah leaned forward between the two bucket seats and tried to talk to Nate, who mostly grunted one-word replies. Meanwhile, Howard peppered me with questions about Dr. Underberg, and what, precisely, we were looking for.

  “But the author of the book”—no matter how many times I reminded Howard that the author was my dad, it didn’t seem to sink in—“didn’t discover why the government buried all the information about Underberg and his battery. The story has no ending.”

  “That stuff is classified,” I said.

  “You can still make an educated guess.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Everything Dad wrote was fact, and he’d still gotten in plenty of trouble.

  Eric stared out the window as the fields flashed by. “Great. So the publisher didn’t pull Dad’s book because of a conspiracy. It was just that it sucked.”

  “Did not!” I snapped.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Howard said. “If the battery was going to save all this energy and money and help the environment and everything else, why didn’t the government get behind it?”

  “Dad says people in power sometimes work against the public’s best interests,” I said.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Howard insisted.

  “But that’s how it works anyway,” Nate broke in. “In history class we learned how Henry Ford and other car manufacturers convinced President Eisenhower back in the fifties that highways were the best way to escape a nuclear attack.”

  “Probably better than hiding under your desk,” said Eric.

  Nuclear attack again? Was every decision made by the government in the twentieth century because people were afraid of getting nuked? I looked out at the pale blue sky. I couldn’t imagine living under such a shadow.

  “Whether it actually would work is beside the point,” said Nate. “It got the government to build highways instead of public transportation systems. Trains and subways might save energy and money, just like that battery, but it didn’t help Ford sell cars.”

  “So whoever buried the Underberg battery had something they wanted the government to use instead,” I said.

  “It still doesn’t make sense,” Howard said. “And it isn’t about space, either.”

  I bit my tongue. Why did everything have to be about space with him? I know he’d helped us, and that he was the reason we even had a ride today, but, honestly, a little bit of Howard went a long way.

  “I mean, that puzzle you found was clearly astronomical, but Underberg wasn’t an astronomer. He did do some rocket science, but he mainly worked on life support for the astronauts. Not just suits, but everything that had to do with living in space, eating, breathing—”

  “Pooping,” Nate volunteered. Savannah sat back in her seat, wrinkling her nose. I snickered. Oh no, her idol said the P-word.

  “And the military,” Eric added. The submarine research had always been my brother’s favorite part. “He built things for guys living in subs at the bottom of the Pacific for months and months.”

  “All kinds of survival stuff. Astronauts, submarine stuff, nuclear war preparations . . .”

  “So why did he stop?” Nate asked. “Did they find out he was a Russian spy or something?”

  “No!” I practically shouted. “Underberg hated the Russians. He thought they were going to destroy the world with nuclear bombs. You know, if the USA didn’t do it first.”

  “Sounds like a good cover story to me.” Nate pulled off the road and into a service station. “I need to fill up. You each owe me two bucks for gas, by the way.”

  I got out of the truck on the driver’s side to give Nate six dollars. Since this whole trip had been my idea, the least I could do was pay Savannah’s and my brother’s way.

  “You’re the ringleader of this operation, huh?” he asked as I handed over the money. “Why don’t you tell me what this is really all about?”

  “What did Howard say?”

  “Nice try. He said you were trying to find a scale model of the solar system built by a crazy Cold War scientist.” Nate rolled his shoulders. “Howard doesn’t lie—not to me. But though my brother might do that kind of thing for fun on Saturdays, I don’t know what the rest of you are doing out here. It’s not a school project. That much I know for sure.”

  I looked away. Off in the distance, a dark SUV was coming down the road, kicking up dust across the asphalt.

  “Hey.” Nate waved a hand in front of me. “My brother—he doesn’t have the easiest time of it at school. And if you three are messing with him—”

  He might have said something else. I’m not sure. Because that SUV pulled in to the parking lot, and sitting in the front seat was none other than Fiona Smythe.

  I SCRAMBLED BACK into the cab of the truck before she could see me. “Eric! Head down!”

  Eric, with all the training of a sailor who knows to duck when a boom comes flying at him, flattened against the seat.

  “It’s Fiona,” I whispered. “She just pulled up.”

  Savannah leaned over me to see out the window. “Oh, she’s even prettier than you said. Except I don’t know about her fashion sense. What’s up with the black jumpsuit? And who are the two guys in the car with her?”

  Nate stuck his head back inside. “So, you were telling me how this is totally a school project and you aren’t about to get my brother into trouble . . . ?”

  “Fine.” I slid even farther down in the seat. “The woman in that SUV is my dad’s girlfriend, and we’re pretty sure she’s been stealing stuff from him, and that crazy Cold War scientist we were talking about? She’s on a hunt to find the lost prototype of his hundred-year battery and we want to get there first.”

  Nate blinked at me. “See? The truth wasn’t so hard.” Then he shut the door again.

  “Sav,” I hissed. “What’s happening?”

  “She’s getting out of the car and coming over,” Savannah said.

  Oh, no. She’d seen us. She’d seen us and she knew.

  A second later, I
heard Fiona’s smarmy voice floating above us. “Excuse me, young man? Can you help us? We seem to be a little lost.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Nate replied. “I’m not from around here.”

  “Have you heard of Charon Way? It’s the street I’m looking for, and I don’t see it listed on the map.”

  “Nope,” Nate said. I peeked over the side of the window. Fiona was indeed wearing some kind of weird military-style black outfit, with a utility belt and everything. The two men with her were dressed similarly, and their vehicle was crammed full of boxes, wires, and ropes.

  Howard was mumbling something under his breath.

  “What?” I whispered to him, ducking back down.

  “Charon,” he repeated. “It’s the name of Pluto’s largest moon.”

  “Really?” I asked. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe that was the road that Fiona had been asking Dad about. We were so close. I couldn’t let Fiona find that battery first. I strained to hear if Fiona and Nate were saying anything else.

  “Though, really, they’re more like binary dwarf planets because—”

  We were saved from hearing the because as Nate got back in the car. “All right, Howard,” he said. “I’m going to drive now, and you’re going to tell me where, and blondie here is going to make sure the SUV doesn’t follow us, and the other two are going to keep their heads down and explain to me exactly what is going on. Got it?”

  “Yes,” we all said, though with varying levels of enthusiasm.

  Savannah leaned over me and squeaked in excitement. “He likes my hair.”

  “He described your hair,” Eric corrected.

  “Shut up, you two,” I snapped at them. “Nate, what else did she say?”

  “That she was looking for a road that didn’t seem to exist.”

  So I’d been right. Charon Way was the road near Underberg’s old cabin. Fiona was closer on our heels than I’d have liked. Still, she didn’t have a precise location and we did. All we had to do was follow the directions on Howard’s device and we could find it, road or no road.