“What does that mean?” Millie squeaked quietly.
“I think we should probably get out of here,” Halinka suggested, her voice uncharacteristically shaky.
“Okay, great! Thanks, Miss Crankitt,” Pearl said politely, grabbing her friends by the arms and ushering them away slowly from the mysterious old lady. “We’ve got to be going to class now. We’ve got a flying machine to build!”
Miss Crankitt disappeared behind the foliage again as more and more Bunseners arrived for school.
“What do you think she meant?” Millie asked as they swooped up the steep school steps. “Did any of that make sense? Two bright sides of the moon?”
“She’s probably been drinking out of the rain gauge again,” Halinka said, trying to lighten the mood, which had turned a little spooky.
“I don’t know,” Pearl said thoughtfully. “Miss Crankitt doesn’t often talk to students, and she does have a kind of sixth sense.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Pearl,” Halinka snapped. “We’re scientists. We don’t believe in airy-fairy nonsense. We rely on the facts, on figures and numbers, and, and…”
“Equilateral triangles,” Millie offered helpfully.
The look on Halinka’s face showed that wasn’t exactly what she had been searching for.
Pearl followed her two friends into school, feeling slightly unnerved by Miss Crankitt’s rare appearance. But stewing on a spooky old lady’s riddle wouldn’t help build a flying machine, so Pearl pushed the words to the back of her mind.
Chapter 4
“Our first time using the engineering suite, and it’s for something so exciting!” Millie gushed as she threw her bag on the workbench. Her papers flew across the surface, and she sighed happily. “There’s so much space!”
She flicked on two computer monitors and began frantically typing numbers and letters into the keyboard.
“I just love these Ametz 24 computers,” Millie said, pushing her glasses up her nose and watching the screen display in front of her. “Did you know Nova Celeste has the latest Ametz 25 at her space camp?”
“You really are a fangirl!” Halinka laughed. “So, let’s get building! Where do we start?”
“Okay, so according to this flight simulation software, there are a few options for the best design from our sketches,” Millie said, showing Pearl and Halinka the 3-D images on the computer screen. “Personally, I like this one that Halinka designed. It’s powered by battery, it’s manageable, it’s safe, and we can definitely get it done.”
“What about the one that Pearl designed, here?” Halinka said, pointing to the screen with a chewed piece of straw.
“Well, it’s genius, but it’s not something I’ve seen before—it might not work.”
“But if it did, it would be spectacular,” Halinka argued.
“I don’t mind if we want to build Halinka’s,” Pearl said, not wanting to upset anyone.
“I like Pearl’s the best. It’s got class, and it’s totally creative.” Halinka held up the detailed drawing for them to study.
Pearl felt relieved that her friend thought she was a good scientist after all and not just a silly Billy for believing Miss Crankitt’s gibberish.
“Well, let’s try it out,” Millie said, pressing Print and waiting for the blueprint to roll out of the printer. Halinka grabbed the large paper printout and laid it out on the table, poring over the beautiful aerodynamic shapes that Pearl had designed.
“We’ve got all the material here we need,” Pearl said, feeling a wave of confidence wash over her as she watched her two friends study her design.
“We can use the recycled drink can’s metal for the body of the craft, as it’s so lightweight, and the fabric that was upcycled from the lost-and-found box can make up the wings.”
Before Pearl could even finish her sentence, there was a pile of materials on the workbench. Halinka and Millie began hammering and cutting out metal, filling the lab with clattering sounds. The smell of soldering irons from the group on the bench beside them wafted into the air, the engineering suite full of Bunseners busily working away on their flying contraptions. As the day wore on, more and more wonderful inventions began to materialize, and soon the three friends were standing in front of their very own wonderful flying machine.
There was a main body of the craft, with a seat made from recycled rubber bands and just enough room for one girl to squeeze in. A compression pump was neatly tucked away underneath the seat, and two foot pedals provided the pressure needed to push the air up to the wings. The wings swept beautifully along the side of the craft and would flap silently and gracefully, powered by a specially designed solar motor. The whole machine could be steered using one single stick made from the shiniest polished metal. A tiny diesel engine would spark up for takeoff, giving the craft just enough power to get into the air before shutting down and letting it rely on natural power.
“If my flight trajectory calculations are correct, we should need only a small amount of diesel to give us a push off, and then the wings and velocity, plus the wind direction, should be enough to make it across Lake Cosmos,” said Pearl. “We don’t need fuel for the entire flight because we used such lightweight materials—we can make dual use of the foot pumps to flap the wings. And it’s going to be windy tomorrow afternoon, so we can harness the power of nature to really make our machine fly!”
“But what about what Nova Celeste said about having something different, like Heather and Megan’s snow machine?” Millie asked, nervously looking around at all the other Bunseners and their contraptions. “I can’t see anything in here that’s really that different.”
“But, Millie,” Pearl said, feeling a little hurt that her friend wasn’t overly impressed with her design, “we are different. We’re Bunsen girls. We’ll always stand out—sometimes without meaning to. We don’t need a gimmick, like a snow machine, and I’m not sure that even was a snow machine on that scooter anyway.”
“You’re not still going on about what Miss Crankitt said, are you?” Halinka said, scoffing as she popped a piece of carrot granola bar from Millie’s bag into her mouth.
“Well, no,” Pearl replied, feeling a little flushed with embarrassment and wondering if her friends’ opinions of her could get any worse. “I was actually thinking about why the snow wasn’t melting. It was so hot this morning, and the melting point of water is 32°Fahrenheit/0°Celsius. So how did all that ‘snow’ just sit on the street?”
Halinka stopped chewing, and Millie pushed her glasses up her nose.
“And I don’t want to be mean, but…” Pearl hesitated.
Halinka finished Pearl’s sentence. “How could two unbelievably lazy, mean girls invent anything?”
“Yes, that’s about the measure of it,” Pearl continued. “I’m sorry to bring up Miss Crankitt, but she’s right. It cannot snow in June when it’s this warm. Just like there can’t be two bright sides of the moon. It’s a scientific impossibility.”
“So if it isn’t snow coming off the scooter, what is it?” Millie asked.
“Exactly.”
“Well, they copied our designs once. Maybe they copied this. Let me check this out a second,” Millie said, pulling out her A–Z of Amazing Compounds, Elements, and Seriously Sassy Substances. “This is the only copy left in print. It has every chemical substance dating back all the way to the eighteenth century! Esters, Ethers, Fermium, Ferrum…Freezacon! It’s in here!” Millie shrieked.
“What does it say?” Halinka and Pearl huddled around Millie as she read out loud:
“‘Freezacon is a lightweight material invented in 1955 and used in the engineering and manufacture of spaceships and rockets and other high-orbit-flying crafts. It was banned only a year later, after it was found that, when exposed to direct sunlight, a white, powdery residue flaked off, making any craft built from Freezacon very weak and prone to disintegrating midflight!’”
Halinka squinted up at the blazing sun in the sky above them.
&
nbsp; “Like the direct sunshine we have today!” she said.
“But that’s not all,” Millie said gravely. “If the Freezacon comes into contact with water, it…”
“It what?” Pearl asked.
“It explodes! We need to warn Heather and Megan!” Millie shrieked, stuffing the sketchbook of designs into her bag.
“But everyone else is taking their flying machines out into the yard for test flights!” Halinka harrumphed.
“Millie’s right,” said Pearl. “We can leave our machine in the engineering lab for now and test it later. It’s more important that we warn Heather and Megan that they could get hurt. Time to take a trip up the hill to Atom!”
Chapter 5
It was fairly easy to sneak out of Miss Bunsen’s School without anybody noticing, as everyone was so busy building their flying machines. Apart from having to bat off a few squirrels, Pearl, Millie, and Halinka were soon on their way up the hill toward Atom Academy.
“The gates are locked.” Halinka sighed, rattling the shiny, geometric gates. “And we know better than to try to break in again.”
“But we need to speak to Megan and Heather ASAP,” Pearl said, ringing the buzzer.
A security camera mounted up high on the gate swung around and pointed at the three girls before a robotic voice came through the intercom.
“Yes, visitor. Please state your intention.”
“Um, we need to speak to Megan McNebulus and Heather Etherson. It’s a matter of urgency.”
The camera made a noise as if it were zooming in closer to the girls. “Face recognition activated. You are banned. You are banned. Security mode activated!”
“But Megan and Heather are in danger!” Pearl continued.
“SECURITY MODE ACTIVATED. THREE, TWO, ONE…”
When she rang the buzzer again, she shot backward and landed on her bottom. “It electrocuted me!” she said with a shiver.
“Are you okay?” Millie asked, gingerly putting her arm around her friend.
“I’m fine. It was very low voltage. Just enough to get rid of me.”
Pearl stood up and dusted herself off when suddenly the girls’ attention was drawn to a funny noise coming from the bottom of the hill.
“Is that…?” Millie began.
“The fire alarm!” Halinka shrieked.
The three girls raced back down the hill where, sure enough, in between all the flying machines in the yard, the whole school was lined up. Even the squirrels sat neatly outside along the street. There was a fire engine hosing down a little hole in the roof, and Miss Bunsen was talking to one of the firefighters.
He pointed to the friends running down the hill, and Miss Bunsen turned, a relieved smile spreading across her face.
“What happened, Miss Bunsen?” asked Halinka, running up to her.
“Oh, girls!” she cried. “We evacuated the school. Everyone is safe, but we panicked when we couldn’t find you. These three are the last to be accounted for, sir,” she said, nodding to the firefighter.
“Oh. Miss Bunsen, we’re so sorry to have worried you,” Pearl said. “We had tried to visit Atom—”
“Yes, yes, we’ll have to sort that out later,” Miss Bunsen said, waving them away. “Right now, we have a disaster on our hands. It’s the engineering suite!”
“What about the engineering suite?” Pearl asked, horrified.
The firefighter responded. “Rodents seem to have gnawed through the wiring and caused a small fire.”
“Rodents?” asked Pearl.
“Those squirrels!” growled Halinka. “They’ve got to go, Miss Bunsen!”
“Is it ruined?” Millie asked, her hands covering her ears as though she didn’t want to hear the answer.
“No, it should be fine with a bit of a clean, but the firefighters have closed it off as a precaution. We don’t know if our furry friends got to any other wires, so it’s too dangerous to turn anything on.”
“But surely we can get in there,” Pearl said, pleading. “Our invention is inside!”
The firefighter shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s out of the question until we have the chance to inspect the building. Our wiring expert will be in once the break begins, and you’re all safely on your holidays.”
The girls gasped.
“Miss Bunsen, how can we enter the competition without our flying craft?” asked Pearl.
“I’m quite sure you three have the ingenuity to think of something. I don’t raise my Bunseners to let a small fire make them give up!” And then, after giving them a theatrical wink, she swept off, counting and recounting her Bunseners again and again just to be completely sure they had all escaped the building.
“I hate those squirrels,” said Halinka. “There goes our chance of winning the competition.”
“And of us being together this summer,” Millie sobbed.
“And of Halinka staying at Miss Bunsen’s!” cried Pearl. She thought for a second before spinning around to face her friends.
“Okay,” she said firmly. “Miss Bunsen is right. We can’t give up. We had one problem.”
“Trying to warn Heather and Megan about their dangerous material?” Millie asked.
“Yes,” Pearl replied, and nodded toward the thin plume of smoke emerging from the hole in the roof. “And now we have two.”
“I can think of a few dozen other problems,” Halinka said, glaring angrily at the line of guilty-looking squirrels.
“You know what? We can sort both of them, but we’ll have to be quick and we’ll have to improvise…a lot!” Pearl smiled.
“Well, that’s what we’re good at!” Halinka winked at Millie.
“So what’s the plan?!” Millie asked eagerly Pearl crouched down on the sidewalk, grabbed a stone, and began to scribble away, her two friends hovering above her eager to see what they were challenged to do.
“Millie, you’ve still got a Grrl Bot in your locker, right?”
“Sure do.”
“Okay, so let’s program her to fly to Atom and deliver a message to Heather and Megan. We can then have the Grrl Bot returned to us with a message from Heather and Megan, so we’re sure they know of the danger.”
“Boom! One problem down, one to go,” said Halinka.
“Next, we need to build our flying craft without the engineering suite, which is going to be the tricky part.” Pearl put her finger to her forehead.
“That seems like an understatement,” said Halinka.
“I’ve still got this!” Millie pulled out Pearl’s original drawing from her sketchbook.
“Brilliant!” Pearl gushed, grabbing the precious diagram from Millie.
“Halinka, I need you to scour the school and the bins for anything we can use to build this thing again. It won’t be perfect, but at least we’ll still have a chance! Millie, can you help me scale up this drawing, so we know how much stuff we’ll need?”
“Well, th-th-the thing is,” Millie stuttered, “this design was brilliant when we had the engineering suite and the Ametz 24 computers to figure out the calculations for the flight trajectory, but trying to build this machine and make it fly by just working out the numbers in our heads is risky. We could end up getting very wet.”
Millie flicked through the sketchbook of designs. “We could use Halinka’s design instead,” she suggested, pointing to the much simpler drawing. “We could definitely get this built and across the lake, no problem.”
Pearl wondered if Millie thought Halinka was a better engineer than Pearl. After all, she hadn’t been so keen on using Pearl’s design in the first place.
Halinka’s face flushed with excitement before suddenly becoming more serious.
“No,” she said, looking at Pearl. “Pearl is the best designer among us. I may be a whiz at mechanics and making stuff, but Pearl is our girl when it comes to creativity, and that is what Nova Celeste is looking for. Sure, my design will get us safely and easily across the lake, but that’s not the Bunsen spirit. We’re going to build Pe
arl’s craft! Even if it ends up at the bottom of Lake Cosmos as a glorified fish house, at least we tried.”
There was a moment of silence while the girls let the enormity of their task sink in.
“Let’s do this,” Pearl said, leaning in to hug Halinka. Maybe she had been worried about losing her friend for nothing.
“No time for hugs!” Halinka shouted, ducking out of the way. “We’ve got a flying machine to build. And unless someone stops me, I’ve got some squirrels that I need to visit!”
The friends laughed as Halinka pantomimed her trademark squirrel battle dance.
“We’ll need to decide what to make it out of,” said Millie, looking about the yard doubtfully.
“I’ll find you something to build with, Millie. I promise,” said Halinka.
“Thanks, Halinka,” said Millie.
As the rest of the school filed back inside, the friends began scouring the school for parts. They had some building to do.
Chapter 6
Halinka plonked a large and slightly soggy cardboard box down onto the playground floor.
“That’s all I could find,” she said as she watched Millie and Pearl pick through the junk. They’d found everything from empty tomato cans in the kitchen rubbish to some twisty, old hoses Mr. Bell, the caretaker, had let them use.
Pearl held up two electric whisks, examining them closely before turning to Millie. “Do you think we can convert these to run on battery power?”
“We could, but batteries big enough to keep those spinning for the whole flight across Lake Cosmos would be very heavy,” Millie said, trying to resist the urge to push her glasses up her nose.
“Hmmm, anyone got any chalk?” Pearl asked.
Halinka reached behind her ear and flicked a stick of blue chalk over to her friend. Pearl started scribbling on the ground.
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