The Mapmaker and the Ghost(43)
As Lint pushed the shopping cart over to help No-Bone out, he stopped to look at the picture of Nikola Tesla that was hanging underneath his coil.
“Hey,” Lint said to Brains. “That’s the same guy who’s hanging in your lab.” He bent down to look at the writing underneath the picture. “‘Nikola Tesla spent his life trying to find different sources of energy, often from the earth itself,’” he read slowly and deliberately. “Hey, like you!” Lint looked over at Brains.
Brains couldn’t help but give a small smile. Getting directly compared to one of your heroes by a friend was no everyday occurrence.
“It’s great that you’ve chosen to demonstrate your ability to read, Lint,” came Spitbubble’s low voice. “But has it replaced the brain activity reminding you that you have a job to do?”
Lint shut up and quickly pushed the cart over to No-Bone’s station.
Brains thought that was a little rich coming from Spitbubble, considering that he had insisted on taking a few minutes during the time Brains was in the control room to show off his own namesake skill to the rest of the group. The giant soap bubble exhibit had probably never seen such an enormous, unbroken sphere in its existence, but still. There was a time and place for everything.
Spitbubble never came with them on their normal missions, but this one was so big that apparently even he’d felt the need to be there. Not that he did much. Currently, he was leaning on the long rod that led to the Tesla coil and watching the rest of the kids like a hawk, waiting to criticize or bark orders depending on whichever needs arose. Sometimes, Brains didn’t like the older boy very much. But then he would remind himself of all he had done for the Gross-Out Gang, of all he still planned to do in giving them a permanent home, and he would shoo those thoughts out of his head.
Brains didn’t have time for thoughts outside of science now, anyway. He was examining the wave machine. He hadn’t planned on taking it, but maybe it would be possible to somehow use it with the stream that ran by his lab. And maybe, he thought as he eyed the giant fans, it might be possible to harness some wind power too. After all, they could use all the energy they could generate.
“Lint, when you’re done over there, come help me take this apart too,” Brains said, as he walked over to the hydropower station and started to figure out how to disassemble the wave machine.
Just as he was about to turn the first screw with his screwdriver, he heard what sounded like a giant, inhuman sneeze.
Everyone froze. A few seconds later, there came another one.
And then another.
“It’s the exhibit next door,” Brains finally said, and they all sighed a little in relief.
“But why is it going off?” No-Bone asked.
“I don’t know,” Brains said, eyebrows furrowed.
“Snotshot,” Spitbubble said, “go investigate.”
Snotshot nodded and started to quietly make her way over to the bacteria exhibit down the hall.
30
AN A-HA AND AH-CHOO MOMENT
The hardest part of Goldenrod and Birch’s plan came right at the very beginning, when they had to find a way to get into the museum on the heels of the Gross-Out Gang. Goldenrod took the lead there, using her stealth skills to hide behind the corner of the building. Then, as soon as Lint had passed through the door, she quietly sprinted so that before the door could fully close, she had reached it and put a large piece of duct tape over the lock mechanism. When she closed the door seconds later, it looked shut—but it wasn’t locked.
Their next step was to go sit by the front of the museum and wait. According to Toe Jam’s instructions, they would be clear to enter once the red lights on the cameras were off. That would mean that Brains had gotten into the control room and started the looped DVD and that no one would see them go into the closed museum.
Less than ten minutes later, Birch said, “They’re off. Let’s go.” He led the way around the building to the back door and the Morams slipped in, with Goldenrod peeling off the duct tape before closing the door again. After all, a good explorer never left any evidence behind when dealing with secret operations.
The museum was peaceful and quiet. Goldenrod had been there before quite a number of times with her family, and it was a little odd to see all of the experiment stations lying still, and all of the lab coats and goggles hung up and in their places. As she passed by the cooking experiment station, she specifically recollected the last time she had been there and how excited her dad had been that there was a new exhibit demonstrating two of his favorite hobbies: science and cooking. If there was only a way the curators could have fit home repair in there, the family might have never seen Mr. Moram again.
Goldenrod knew they had to head to the back double doors to get to the stairs and up to Energy Quest, but she took a little detour first. One, because she knew the Gross-Out Gang had distracted the guard with an exhibit that was close by and she wanted to make sure that he was gone. (After all, it wouldn’t be very adventurous if the Morams simply tattled on Spitbubble’s crew to the authorities … without having a little fun with them first.) And two, because Goldenrod couldn’t help but pay a visit to her favorite exhibit. As long as she was there and all.
Her exhibit was tucked into a front corner. It was a small but loving tribute to the most famous explorers to ever grace their area—so far, anyway: Mr. Meriwether Lewis and Mr. William Clark. The little section had a moss green carpet, and there were a few dioramas under glass showing plastic versions of some of the animals Lewis and Clark had discovered, including Meriwether’s—and Cassandra’s and Toe Jam’s—woodpecker. There was a station where kids could identify five different types of plants based on their characteristics, and there was a nice portrait of Meriwether, maroon overcoat and all. The sight of the familiar overcoat gave Goldenrod a little pang of remorse at how she had behaved the last time she’d seen the ghost. It hadn’t been very scientific or rational of her to storm out on him like that. Once she’d had time to think it through, she’d realized that it really hadn’t been his fault that she couldn’t complete the quest. She hoped she could go back and apologize once this whole thing was over.