Operation Sherlock (3 page)

The woman smiled. Hap and his father. Her two men.

She heard a sound in the yard and returned to the window just in time to see the nearly silent dune buggy disappear over a low ridge of sand. She stood looking after Hap for some time, her fingers worrying the edge of the curtain. Maybe the new people, the scientists, would have some youngsters he could make friends with.

She certainly hoped so.

“This place is hot,” said Roger Phillips as he trudged along the beach.

“And sandy,” said his twin.

“And stupid!” added a third voice.

It came from the leather bag the twins had been passing back and forth all morning.

Rachel grimaced. “I don't know why you wanted to bring him along. He's a pain in the neck.”

“Nobody loves me!” wailed the voice.

Roger ignored it and returned to the question he and Rachel had been discussing. “So—how
are
we going to get out of here?”

“We could pretend to catch some horrible disease,” suggested Rachel. Before Roger could answer, she shook her head, vetoing her own suggestion. “No, that's no good. The doctors here are bound to be better than that school nurse who used to send us home all the time. They'd figure us out in nothing flat.”

“We could build a raft,” suggested Roger, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, as he did whenever he was engaged in intense thought.

“That would be dangerous,” said Rachel.

“And slow,” agreed Roger sadly.

“And stupid,” added the voice from the bag.

Suddenly they heard a plane overhead. Struck simultaneously by a single thought, the twins began to run.

Standing on his basketball, Ray Gammand thrust his fingers through the fence and stared hungrily at the airplane sitting on the runway. The robots were almost done unloading it. Before long it would be leaving. And he
couldn't
figure out how to get on to it.

He clutched the wire in frustration. He had been stopped at the gatehouse by a robot guard demanding that he insert his ID card into a slot in its chest. Since he had no ID card, the “electronic creep” (as Ray now thought of it) had refused to let him pass.

“It's getting harder and harder for a kid to get away with anything,” said Ray mournfully.

“I know just what you mean,” replied a deep voice beside him.

Ray was so startled he almost fell off his basketball. Tightening his grip on the fence, he turned his gaze sideways.

Standing next to him was a tiny, snub-nosed girl dressed in a grubby sweatshirt that hung nearly to her knees. Her blond hair was gathered into two bunches that dangled at the sides of her freckled face, and her blue eyes danced with mischief.

But it was her size that immediately endeared her to Ray, who had never forgiven his body for choosing his mother's genes for height instead of his father's. He still couldn't believe the unfairness of a universe that would allow someone who loved basketball and had a father who was seven feet tall to stall out in his own growth pattern before he even reached five feet. Ray considered anyone shorter than himself a potential ally. This girl was short enough to make him want to open immediate diplomatic relations.

“So—you thinking about hopping a quick flight back home?” she asked.

Ray blushed, a rosy tone that showed even through his dark skin.

“Nice cheeks,” said the girl. “But dangerous. You give away too much information when you do that. Anyway, I figure the airplane is out. But maybe if we work together, we can come up with some other way to blow this popsicle stand.”

“Popsicle stand?”

“Rinky-dink place; in this case a small, stupid island.”

“You want to get out, too?” asked Ray.

“No, I want to stay here and rot, but I was thinking of taking a short vacation first. Why don't you get off that basketball before you fall and break your neck?”

Ray stumbled off the ball. “What's your name?” he asked.

“Wendell.”

He blinked. “That's a boy's name.”

“So my parents were mixed up. Actually, it's my last name. My first name is Wendy. My initials are even better. My mother and grandmother have the same name, so I'm WW III—just like the next war.”

Ray frowned. Though he tried to ignore current events, the rumors of war that had been circulating for the last year had made even him nervous. “I don't think that's funny. Anyway, your mother couldn't have been named Wendy Wendell before she got married!”

“I come from a family of strong-minded women. We always keep our own name when we get married.”

“Terrific,” said Ray, trying to figure out if this kid was for real. “So what do people call you?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Wonderchild.”

Ray was silent.

“Look, it wasn't my idea. It started with my parents. They used to call me their ‘little wonderchild.' But I don't think you should hold a kid responsible for her parents' minor insanities, do you?”

Ray shook his head.

“Anyway, once I got to school, the meaning changed. My teachers couldn't believe I was for real. They used to wonder if I really
was
a child.”

Ray found himself sympathizing with the teachers.

“So how about you, Ray. What do—”

Ray blinked. “I never told you my name!” he said suspiciously.

For an instant Wendy “the Wonderchild” Wendell looked confused. The look was quickly replaced by a mysterious smile. Putting her finger beside her nose, she winked and said in a deep German accent, “Ve haf our little methods,
ja?”

Ray looked around for help.

Tripton Duncan Delmar Davis glared down at the pair of redheads blocking his path.

“This is pointless,” said the girl.

“And stupid,” replied Trip.

“Hey!” cried a voice from inside the leather bag the girl was carrying. “That's my line!”

“Shut up,” said the girl, slapping the bag.

“Look,” said the boy next to her, who was obviously her brother. “There's room for two, but not for three. It doesn't make any sense for Rachel and me to split up—”

“Then stay together,” said Trip. “I was here first.”

A flicker of annoyance passed over the redhead's face. He began rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. He started to speak, but his words were drowned out by the sound of an engine starting up. The doors of the robo-truck they were standing beside slammed shut and the vehicle began to roll toward the airfield gate. Trip grabbed for it, but his fingers slid off the smooth metal.

“There!” he said bitterly. “You made me miss my best chance to get out of here.”

The three youngsters watched the automatic vehicle they had been fighting over roll up to the plane. Trip imagined himself scrambling out of the truck and through the plane's cargo doors. He was sure he could have done it without getting caught. A few hours of quiet hiding, tucked behind some boxes, and he would have been out of this place.

He realized he was holding himself so tensely his shoulders were starting to ache. How he longed to go home!

Shaking his head, he turned sadly away.

The redheads started to follow him.

“It was a crazy idea anyway,” said the boy to his sister. “Dad would have been worried sick.”

True
, thought Trip, imagining how his own parents would have reacted if he had succeeded.

“Besides, he probably would have figured out where we had gone and been coming after us in a few hours,” said the other redhead with a sigh.

Scuffing along ahead of them, Trip nodded his head. That, too, was equally true for his parents. He slowed his footsteps just a bit.

“But I did want to go home,” said the boy, who was now just a few steps behind Trip.

“Where's home?” asked Trip, without looking around.

“Cambridge,” said the girl. “We had a great house just a few blocks from Harvard.”

Trip stopped and let the twins catch up with him. “I went there with my mom once,” he said. “I liked it. I'm from Philadelphia, and…” He paused in mid-sentence. From the corner of his eye he had spotted something wrong.

In an emergency the human brain can work faster than its owner can consciously think. That's what happened to Trip at that moment. Before he could figure out what he had seen, a message from his brain made him grab each of the twins by an arm.

To their surprise, Roger and Rachel found themselves being thrust toward the ditch at the edge of the road.

“Duck!”
cried the stranger.

As the three youngsters hit the dirt, a deep booming began to shake the air above them.

 

Gamma Ball

Smoke was still rising from the site of the explosion when Ray Gammand and the Wonderchild came pounding up to the newly formed crater. On either side of it the twisted ends of a metal fence looked like a tangle of dead branches.

The rest of the fence, undamaged, ran on as far as they could see in either direction.

“Plasmagoric,” said Wendy, peering into the blackened pit. It stretched some thirty feet from side to side, and seemed a good fifteen feet deep. “That must have been the mother of all firecrackers!”

Glancing to their right, the Gamma Ray noticed an enormously tall boy with close-cropped brown hair. He was flanked by a pair of redheads who came up to about his shoulder. Behind them, even taller than the brown-haired boy, loomed his own father, Dr. Hugh Gammand.

“Come on,” said Ray. Grabbing Wendy by the hand, he made his way through the group of scientists and guards converging on the site of the explosion. “What happened?” he asked when he had reached his father's side.

“Something blew up.”

Wendy began to laugh. Ray looked disgusted. “Thanks for the news flash, Dad.”

Dr. Gammand shrugged. “Ask a stupid question…”

“That's what my mother always says,” whispered Trip Davis to the Phillips twins.

“But what was it?” insisted Ray.

“A guardhouse,” said a tall woman who had come up behind them. She had a prominent, hawklike nose. Her white lab coat set off the thick braid of glossy chestnut hair that reached nearly to her waist.

“Ah, Dr. Clark!” said Ray's father.

“Morning, Gammand,” said the woman, nodding her head. “This your son? He has your eyes, if not your height.”

Ray decided that he disliked Dr. Clark.

“What was it guarding?” asked the red-haired boy standing nearby.

“I beg your pardon?” said Dr. Clark.

“The guardhouse,” said the boy. “What was it guarding?”

“Nothing, fortunately. Now that the military has left and the island is no longer open to visitors, they've abandoned it. Originally it was built to control access to the power plant.”

Dr. Clark gestured to her left. Across the crater left by the explosion the kids saw a road leading to a long, low building set at the edge of the water.

“It uses the tide,” said Dr. Clark tersely. “Catches the water and turns it into electricity. Zero pollution. Great idea, if they ever get the bugs out. Sylvia built it.”

“Sylvia?” asked Dr. Gammand.

“Sylvia Standish,” replied Dr. Clark. “I met her yesterday. She's been here since the island was first set up as an Air Force base. She stayed on after they closed, to continue working on her project. Doesn't seem to care much for the changeover. That's her now.”

Looking in the direction that Dr. Clark nodded, they saw an attractive blond woman in jeans and a blue sweater being led around the edge of the crater by a man in a military uniform. The woman was shaking, and her face was pale. She clung to the man's arm.

Four Jeeps pulled up to the crowd, and several uniformed people jumped out. Politely but firmly they began asking the onlookers to return to their workstations.

“End of the show,” said Dr. Gammand. “I wonder when they'll let us know what that was all about, eh, Ray?”

There was no answer.

Dr. Gammand looked down. His son and the other youngsters were gone.

“Roger and Rachel Phillips,” said the red-haired girl, completing the round of introductions. “And we feel just like the rest of you—it wasn't fair for them to drag us here against our wishes!”

The five youngsters walked in a tight group, their gloom alleviated to some extent by the excitement of the explosion.

“What do you supposed caused that blowup?” asked Trip after a while.

“Some crazy experiment, I imagine,” said Rachel.

“Nah,” responded Roger. “Dr. Clark said it was a guardhouse. They wouldn't be doing experiments in there.”

“A gas leak?” suggested Wendy.

“Doesn't seem likely in an electrical plant,” said Trip with a smile.

Wendy smacked herself in the side of the head. “Duh!” she said, making a face.

“Could it have been lightning?” asked Ray uncertainly.

“Sabotage seems more likely to me,” said Trip.

The others stopped in their tracks. “Sabotage?” asked Rachel.

Trip shrugged. “This is a top-secret project, isn't it?”

“It sure is!” said Wendy. “Even
we
don't know what it's about!”

“Well, if they're keeping it this hush-hush, it stands to reason it's pretty important. And whenever someone's working on something important, there's usually someone else who doesn't want them to succeed. At least, that's the way it seems from the history I've read.”

“Even so, we have no real reason to suspect sabotage,” said Roger.

Trip shrugged. “I was just throwing it out as a possibility.”

“How's the possibility of eating?” asked Wendy. “I'm so hungry I could eat a horseburger.”

“It's only ten o'clock in the morning!” said Rachel.

“My stomach is not ruled by the clock,” replied Wendy.

“Come on,” said Trip. “My mother told me how to get to the base canteen. It's not far from here.”