The Eureka Key

by Sarah L. Thomson

  The lizard seemed to decide that the four of them were not much of a threat. It made its way to the ground and strolled right by Sam’s feet, its tail creating a curving trail through the dust. Sam watched the lizard walk to the edge of the hill and drop out of sight.

  Sam looked back at the ground at his feet. The lizard’s tail had brushed some of the dirt aside, exposing the ground underneath. Something odd caught his eye, and Sam crouched down and began to brush away the rest of the dirt. When he saw what was there, he froze.

  Suddenly, Aloha was at Sam’s side. “What is it? What did you find?”

  Sam straightened up, startled. “Uh, I’m not sure . . .”

  At their feet, carved directly into the rock floor, was unmistakably the letter M.

  “Clear the rest of that dirt away!” Aloha said. “All of you!”

  On their hands and knees, Sam, Martina, and Theo did as they were told, brushing aside the pale dust of the desert. It rose in clouds before settling back over them, coating their clothes and sticking to their sweaty skin. Slowly, a shape emerged under their hands: a huge circle notched with small holes and letters of the alphabet at regular intervals all around it.

  “Well? What is it?” Aloha barked. “How does it work?”

  “How should we know?” Sam spluttered. “It’s a clock, okay? A big, weird clock with no hands in the middle of the desert. Happy now?”

  “No, I’m not.” Aloha scowled. “I want that door open, now. I’ll ask you again: how does it work?”

  “I told you, I don’t know!” Sam shouted, his frustration making him momentarily forget about the gun. Why did the guy seem to think that Sam and the others would know what was going on here?

  Aloha sighed and rubbed his chin. “Fine. You said it’s a clock without hands, right? So find the hands. Search this whole place. And don’t try anything funny.”

  They were all searching for five minutes before Sam heard Martina shout, “I found something!”

  Sam whipped around to look at her. She was kneeling down near the stone door. “What is it?” he said.

  “I think I know what fits in those holes!” Martina sounded strangely happy, as if she’d forgotten they were in danger and was just excited to learn something new.

  Sam made his way over to where Martina was brushing dirt away from something long and thin lying near the wall. With the dust all over it, it just looked like another chunk of rock. But in the trails left by Martina’s fingers, Sam could see the ghostly reflection of his own face, his eyes wide with surprise.

  It was a huge sculpted object—five feet tall and shaped like a bird’s wing—and it was made entirely of glass. Sam and Theo gathered around it, helping Martina to brush it clean. It was a crazy thing to find up on a mountain in the desert. Of course, this whole situation was crazy. Maybe I’ve gotten sunstroke and am delirious, Sam thought as he helped brush off the last of the dirt. Maybe I’m hallucinating.

  “It’s a gnomon,” Martina said.

  Martina must have sunstroke too. Now she’s talking nonsense.

  “Part of a sundial,” she added, as if she’d noticed Sam’s blank look. “The part that casts a shadow.”

  Okay, not babbling. Just showing off.

  “So that clock thing over there . . .” Sam looked at the circle on the ground. “It’s a sundial?”

  Martina nodded. “I think so.”

  “Now, that’s more like it,” Aloha said, sounding pleased. “Get that Norman—”

  “Gnomon,” Martina corrected him.

  “Whatever,” Aloha said. “Get it over where it belongs.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out a cell phone and put it to his ear. “Yes, sir,” he said after a moment. “I found the entrance. They’re in my custody.”

  Sam felt his knees turn to water. They weren’t just dealing with one crazy tourist—they were dealing with a crazy tourist with a boss. What in the world had he gotten himself into?

  Aloha stuffed the phone back into his pocket. “Hurry up,” he said. “The sooner you kids put that thing together, the sooner we can get that door open.”

  “Well, if you helped a little,” Sam muttered under his breath as he slipped his hands under the wing, ready to lift it off the ground.

  “You’re just trying to get us killed, aren’t you?” Martina whispered, crouching down next to him.

  Sam, Theo, and Martina heaved the glass wing up and staggered toward the sundial. The wing had a long spindle on one end that was obviously meant to go into a hole and keep the heavy thing upright—if they could get over there without dropping it.

  And which hole was it supposed to go into?

  After a few moments of shuffling and indecision, Theo grunted, “Put it down!”

  Without Theo’s help, the wing wasn’t going much of anywhere anyway. They eased it to the ground, leaning it against a handy chunk of rock so that it would not be so difficult to pick up the next time.

  Martina flopped down too. “How about some of that water now?” she asked, pulling off her hat to rub sweat and dust from her face. Theo nodded.

  After swallowing a few mouthfuls of warm water, Sam stood beside the glass wing. He ran a finger along the smooth, curved surface.

  “How’s this thing going to work, anyway?” he asked. “I mean, it’s made out of glass. What kind of a shadow is it going to cast?”

  Martina finished a long swallow and shook her head, handing the bottle to Theo. “I don’t know.” She frowned. “And what about the door?”

  Sam squinted at it. “You think putting the sundial together will really make it open?”

  Martina shrugged. “They must be connected. Why else would someone put this here?” A faint wind blew Martina’s hair around her face, and blew new dust across the face of the sundial. Seconds later, Sam heard a faint noise—whappity, whappity, whappity—that got louder with every passing second.

  Sam’s head snapped around, and he spotted something heading right for them—a helicopter!

  Sam’s heart soared. Park rangers! Police! A search party! They had to wave, yell, distract Aloha somehow, and get the attention of the people in that chopper. This was their chance!

  The helicopter was closer now, black against the bright-blue sky, its blades beating the air and whipping up a fierce wind that tugged at Sam’s shirt and flipped Theo’s hat off his head.

  Sam was about to raise his arms over his head and shout, but Aloha beat him to it. “Over here!” their captor shouted, waving his arms at the helicopter.

  The words died on Sam’s lips.

  Whoever was in that helicopter wasn’t coming to their rescue.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The helicopter, kicking up massive clouds of red-brown dust, landed on a flat stretch of rock below the plateau where Sam, Theo, and Martina stood. The chopper’s blades slowed, and then, out of the dust, several figures emerged.

  The first was the tallest, and he stood still for a few moments, looking up toward the three children and their captor. Despite the heat, he was wearing a pristine black suit jacket, vest, and tie over a white shirt. Sam didn’t like the way it felt to have the man’s eyes on him. For some reason, he reminded Sam of the rattlesnake, the way it had eyed Martina’s leg, deciding where to sink its fangs.

  There were four other men with him, dressed in hiking gear and heavy boots, carrying packs full of who knows what. At a signal from the first man, they all began to move up the hillside. It wasn’t long before they had all arrived on the little plateau. It was starting to feel kind of crowded up there.

  Aloha nodded at the man who had gotten out of the helicopter first. “Mr. Flintlock,” he said, sounding proud of himself. “There’s the entrance, sir; you can see it for yourself. This sundial is the key to getting it open.”

  Up close, Flintlock reminded Sam of the mountainous terrain that surrounded them—big and dangerous. Even his craggy, sunbaked skin looked like it was carved out of stone. So here is the master of the game, Sam thought.

&nb
sp; Sam watched Flintlock frown at the sundial and move slowly around it, his eyes unreadable behind sunglasses, his dark hair coated with a thin layer of brown dust. His lips were pressed tightly together in thought as he took in every detail of the engraving at his feet and the glass wing that leaned nearby. It was a look of intense concentration that Sam recognized.

  Maybe Mr. Flintlock knew about puzzles too.

  And puzzles usually had some kind of a prize at the end. A payoff. Something to make figuring them out worthwhile. What could possibly be behind that closed door, Sam wondered, that made all this worthwhile?

  “It’s a sundial, all right,” Flintlock muttered. “But it needs something to cast a shadow so it can function.”

  “It’s called a gnomon—” Martina started.

  Sam and Theo both glared at her. She gulped and fell silent.

  Mr. Flintlock slipped off his sunglasses and turned to the kids, as if he had just noticed them standing there. His dark eyes scanned each of them before he shook his head and scoffed. “Kids,” he muttered. “They’re just a bunch of kids.”

  “These kids can do it,” Aloha assured him. “I saw them figure out the clues with my own eyes. Trust me, boss—they’re little geniuses, all of them!”

  Geniuses? Teachers, principals, and parents had called Sam Solomon a lot of things, but “genius” had never been one of them.

  Flintlock looked skeptical. He didn’t believe in that “genius” description any more than Sam did. And yet, Sam got the feeling that if he, Martina, and Theo couldn’t solve this puzzle, Mr. Flintlock would be very disappointed.

  And Sam didn’t particularly want to find out what he was like when he was disappointed.

  “Fine,” Flintlock finally said. “Let’s see what they can do.” His tone suggested that he didn’t expect it to be much.

  “Okay, kids,” Aloha said, waving the gun. “Get started.”

  “Hold on a second,” Sam said, swallowing his nervousness. “Mister, um—Flintlock? You obviously were expecting someone else, so if you could just let us go, we’d be happy to help you find . . .”

  Sam trailed off as Flintlock turned, and he saw the cold expression on the man’s stony face. It made Sam think of the rattlesnake again. It was the look of a man not used to being refused.

  “Sam.” Theo, standing close by, spoke just loudly enough for Sam to hear him. “Better do what he says.”

  “Good advice.” Aloha sneered, his mouth stretched into an ugly smile. Behind him, one of the other men settled down on a rock and slipped a jackknife from his pocket. He flipped it open, using the tip of the blade to pick at something in his teeth.

  Sam’s heart sunk. Between the gun, the knife, and the human mountain in the spotless suit, they had exactly zero chance of getting away. Not yet. Theo was right—and more than that, a not-so-small part of Sam wanted to see what was behind that door too.

  Sam walked over to the sundial, where Martina had already dropped to her knees to study some of the markings in the stone more closely. Sam followed her example, and Theo moved slowly around the circle.

  “This is weird,” Martina murmured. “Normally, sundials use Roman numerals. I see an I over here for one o’clock, and a V over there for five—but these other letters don’t make any sense.” She pulled off her glasses to rub dust from the lenses.

  Sam scanned the rest of the letters. “Here’s a C—wait, no—there’s three of them. C is a Roman numeral. And so is this D, and the M.”

  “True,” Martina admitted, putting her glasses back on her nose. “But who ever heard of a clock with a hundred hours? Or five hundred? Or a thousand?” She craned her head and pointed at one of the letters. “Anyway, there’s a P. Don’t tell me that’s a numeral too.”

  Theo squinted down at the ground, listing each of the letters out loud. “P, I, V, H, Y, J, G, D, two M’s, and three C’s. Each one with a hole next to it.” He shook his head. “It seems completely random.”

  “Maybe we’re supposed to play Scrabble,” Sam said.

  Martina rolled her eyes. “C’mon, Sam. Anyway, there aren’t nearly enough vowels.” Suddenly Sam saw her eyes focus on something just over his shoulder. “Hey . . .what is that?” She moved past him and dropped into a crouch a few feet away. Sam hurried over and watched her brush dirt and gravel away from a metal plaque on the ground, inscribed with four lines of delicate text. “I saw a corner of it peeking out,” Martina murmured. “We must have uncovered it when we were digging out the gnomon.”

  Sam peered over her shoulder, and they read it together.

  THOUGH YOUR CONSTITUTION MAY BE HALE,

  YOUR QUEST SHALL BUILD A MIGHTY THIRST.

  IF YOU WISH TO ENTER MY OASIS,

  YOU MUST FIRST LOOK TO THE FIRST.

  “An oasis,” Sam muttered. “That sounds good about now.”

  “Look to the first,” Martina said thoughtfully. She sounded calm, as if she’d totally forgotten the scary guys with guns and knives and mysterious motives, as if the puzzle had taken up all her brainpower and left her no room for fear. “What if we put the glass wing into the hole near the I?” she suggested. “That’s a Roman numeral one. Maybe that’s the first?”

  “Isn’t midnight really the first hour of the day?” Sam asked.

  “Hmm, yes,” Martina answered. “But there isn’t a twelve. That would be X plus two I’s, and there’s nothing like that.”

  “It can’t be that easy.” Sam was starting to feel just a bit better. Arguing with Martina was comforting somehow. He looked at the letters again, automatically counting them up in his head. “Wait a second,” he said when he’d finished. “What if the answer has nothing to do with time at all? There are thirteen letters. What kind of a clock has thirteen positions?”

  “Enough!” Both Sam and Martina jumped at the sound of Aloha’s voice, jarring them back to reality. “Enough of this yammering, you two. Get on with it.” His gun moved threateningly back and forth between them.

  To their surprise, Flintlock slapped the gun down.

  “They are getting on with it,” Flintlock barked. “Back off. Arguing is how these two think.” Aloha wilted under the glare of his boss and scurried back to where the other men were waiting.

  “Go on,” Flintlock told them. “Argue some more.”

  Sam swallowed hard. “Okay . . . ,” he said, looking at Martina helplessly. Being told to argue by an adult somehow took all the fun out of it. “So, if the letters are just letters, not Roman numerals, what do they mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Martina said, chewing on her thumbnail.

  “I mean, there’s no word in the English language that uses all those letters, so they each must represent something else. But what?”

  Suddenly Martina shrieked.

  Sam almost leaped out of his own hiking boots. “What? What? Is it another snake?” he cried.

  “What? No, no, no!” Martina said, waving off Sam’s panic like a fly. Theo was watching them both with interest. “What you said, Sam—about the letters representing something. That’s it! That’s the answer!”

  “It is?”

  “Remember that cartoon? The one with the cut-up snake? It had letters on it too. Representing each of the original American colonies. Thirteen colonies! Let’s see if I’m right. Look for the letters. D for Delaware . . .”

  Theo moved back a few paces as Sam scrambled across the dusty rock on hands and knees to find the letter near one of the holes. “Yep, here!”

  “P for Pennsylvania. C for Connecticut,” Martina went on, ticking each one off on her fingers.

  “Got ’em!”

  As Martina called out each letter, Sam found them. M for Maryland and another for Massachusetts, V for Virginia, G for Georgia. But then they ran into trouble.

  “New York!” Martina called out.

  “N, N, N . . .” Sam went all the way around the circle. “No N.”

  “What?” Martina’s face fell. “Then I can’t be right . . .”

 
“And what about these? Y. I.” Sam looked up. “No American colony started with I, right?”

  “No.” Martina looked crestfallen. “I was so sure . . .”

  Sam looked down at the sundial. He had been certain Martina was right too. He’d had that feeling, the one he got when a puzzle was finally coming together.

  Then Sam felt a grin stretching his dry lips as he looked down at the hole in the rock with the I next to it. Puzzles weren’t always about knowing all the facts, whatever Martina might think. Sometimes what you really had to do was just look at things a little differently.

  “Not so fast, Marty. You’re right. You’re a genius after all!”

  “Don’t call me Mar—Wait, I am?”

  “I for Island! Rhode Island! Y for York. They only used one letter to represent each colony—even ones with two words.”

  Sam saw Theo staring at him with what almost looked like admiration. “Brilliant,” Theo murmured, shaking his head.

  Despite everything, Sam grinned. “Okay,” he said, turning back to Martina. “What’s left?”

  Martina’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “New Jersey, New Hampshire,” she said.

  “Yep, we have a J! And here’s an H!”

  “And North and South Carolina!” she said.

  “Those are the two C’s left over—that’s all of them!”

  “So,” Flintlock cut in. “Where does that leave us, children?”

  Whoops. Once again, Sam had gotten so excited about the puzzle, he’d kind of forgotten the bad guys. “I don’t know. Yet. We’re getting there.”

  “Good. Now get there faster,” Flintlock said.

  “A minute ago you said to let them argue,” Theo muttered. “And now you’re telling them to hurry up? You should make up your mind.”

  Flintlock turned his cold gaze on Theo. “Is that so?” he said, his voice like a hiss. “And how about you, tall, dark, and useless? I don’t see you doing a thing. Perhaps you’re expendable.”