The Mapmaker and the Ghost(42)
Still, they all looked around carefully to make sure no one was watching before Brains walked over to the small white box right outside the door and quickly punched in the alarm’s security code he’d spied through his telescope a couple of weeks ago. Then, Spitbubble used the janitor’s keycard No-Bone had gotten hold of to open the back door itself. Once he did, Spitbubble slipped in, followed by Brains, Snotshot, No-Bone, and finally, Lint and the shopping cart, which he carried so that it wouldn’t make any noise. They still hadn’t seen Toe Jam all day, but they’d shrugged it off, since he was never supposed to take part in the day’s plans anyway.
They made their way quietly through the short hallway that led to the double doors of the museum’s first floor. Brains had a stopwatch in his hand. He checked his wristwatch and then, at a particular moment, set the stopwatch to start.
Brains had figured out that the museum’s cameras ran on a specific timer. Every ten seconds, five of the cameras would display in the control room where the sole guard was on duty. That meant that every camera had forty seconds where it would be dark. After collecting all of their grids and charts from the entire summer, Brains had figured out where exactly No-Bone would have to be at every second, and No-Bone, of course, had finessed it.
When Brains motioned for him to go, No-Bone didn’t just saunter to his first checkpoint. Oh no. He was going to make this a much more exciting experience. He knew that he could do a cartwheel followed by a triple flip in just under nine seconds. So he did.
He briefly caught the rest of the kids staring with their mouths agape and then Snotshot rolling her eyes. He just smirked. If there was one thing the circus clowns had taught him, it was never to blow a perfect opportunity to show off.
Brains opened his mouth to say something, but there was no time for him to say it, because in a moment, No-Bone had to be off again, and in fourteen seconds, he was in an entirely different wing.
The kids couldn’t see him anymore, but that didn’t stop No-Bone from flipping and somersaulting the rest of the thirty-two seconds it took for him to get to his destination. Because if there was one thing the acrobats had taught him, it was never to pass up an opportunity to practice.
His destination—for the moment—was a pillar by the museum’s technology exhibit. No-Bone stretched and positioned himself so that he was as tall and straight as the column itself, invisible from the angle the camera was shooting. He eyed the motion sensor-controlled dance floor that was on a stage just behind the pillar. Right now, that stage was a serene blue.
He checked his digital wristwatch and waited, prechoreographing his moves in his head. In a moment came a very small beep. He immediately ran out to the dance floor. It was time to really go wild.
No-Bone broke it down. He pop-and-locked, did headspins, leg flares, bellymills, and a couple of flying leaps for good measure. The floor started going crazy in time with his movements. First it turned all sorts of bright colors and then, as No-Bone’s moves started to get more intense, it began to break out into graphics: popping popcorn kernels, shooting rockets, fireworks.
His watch beeped again and in a flash, he was behind the pillar. Ten seconds later, he was slipping into a height machine that set off a red siren and loudly proclaimed that he was five feet two inches (which, incidentally, was completely wrong. He knew for a fact that he had made it to five feet three a few weeks ago).
Ten seconds after that, he was at a neighboring exhibit, causing a giant metal ladder sculpture to move back and forth in waves and then a sphere filled with blue plasma to spin madly on its axis. He had just taken his hands off of the sphere when he heard the sound of footsteps rushing down the hall.
He had time for one more tiny somersault as he rolled himself quickly onto the landing of the museum’s stairs, and then quietly sped up them, leaving the security guard to look for a five-foot-two ghost.
As soon as the security guard had left his station, Brains slipped in. It took him hardly any time at all to pop in the DVD, and set it up so that the TVs were only playing a recorded version of a perfectly empty science museum on a Thursday afternoon.
Once that was done, the group quickly took the back stairway and entered the second floor, where No-Bone was waiting for them, right by the Energy Quest exhibit.
The exhibit was probably every kid’s dream, but it was especially Brains’s. It had turbines—giant fans—that you could set spinning by using a regular old vacuum cleaner on a smaller fan attached to it. It had a wave machine that let you create giant waves in a little blue pool. It had a plasma station where you could move a coil of hot pink light around with the aid of a magnet. And hovering above it all was Brains’s favorite part: a giant Tesla coil that, during demonstrations, would shoot out huge strands of purple lightning. Brains wished he could’ve found a way to work stealing the coil into their plan; it would look fantastic in his lab. But it was way too bulky. They were going to have their work cut out for them as it was.
Right away, the kids went to the stations they were assigned. Snotshot was unscrewing giant solar panels from the solar energy exhibit, and putting them in her large backpack. No-Bone was dismantling the pump that was the centerpiece of the geothermal exhibit, which demonstrated how you could use steam from the earth itself (as in, say, a hot spring) to make heat and electricity. These were the two stations Brains thought were most important, given the group’s resources in the forest.