The Eureka Key

by Sarah L. Thomson

  “Trying to figure out the armonica,” Martina added.

  “Maybe if we’re lucky, he’ll be tone-deaf.” The air felt heavy and damp in his mouth, hard to breathe, as if it were too old.

  “Can’t count on luck,” Theo countered from up ahead. “Let’s go.”

  The light from the head lamp flickered, then died, leaving them in utter darkness again. “Huh,” Sam said, stopping abruptly. “So much for luck.”

  “And moving,” Theo added from somewhere next to Sam. “Is it broken?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Martina’s voice said. “It’s just the battery.”

  Sam groaned. “That’s not any better, is it? Unless you happen to have a spare battery somewhere on you.”

  The sound of a zipper rang out. “Of course I have a spare,” Martina said with dignity. “Several.”

  “Of course you do.” Sam stifled a grin. Then he remembered that Martina couldn’t see him, and he grinned all he wanted to.

  “Is that a complaint I’m hearing?”

  “Nope, no complaining here!” Little rustling sounds reached Sam’s ears as Martina dug through her backpack. Then came a click as the new battery snapped into place.

  “Martina?” Theo’s voice drifted back; he sounded as if he’d moved ahead a few paces. “You got that light coming? Because the tunnel gets wider up here. I think I found something.”

  “One second,” Martina called.

  Light burst out of the head lamp again, casting Theo’s shadow across yet another metal door.

  Sam peered over Martina’s shoulder. “Man. Those Founders just loved doors, huh?” he grumbled.

  The tunnel widened out around them, forming a natural cave about as wide as a city street. An arch had been carved in one wall, and a thick iron door blocked it. Right in the middle of the door, a half circle of metal stuck out like a handle. Theo was already tugging on it, but the door didn’t budge. Sam ran to his side and lent his own strength. Even between them it was impossible.

  Okay, fine. What had I expected? Sam glowered at the doorway. Bring it on, Ben! They’d figured out the sundial, the magic square, and the Yankee Doodle of Death. He’d like to see this door stop them now.

  “Clues. Always with the clues,” he said, mostly to himself. “Theo, move back, okay?” The big guy stepped aside. Sam couldn’t see any numbers or letters or even musical notes on the door or the walls near it. But there was the thick metal loop sticking out, and now Sam spied a square metal plate in the floor maybe twelve feet away from the door, with an identical loop jutting up from it.

  The plate had wires soldered to it. Sam followed the path of the wires with his eyes. Martina must have been doing the same thing, because the light from her head lamp swung along the wall of the cave until it landed on the thing that the wires were attached to—a metal box, about as tall as Sam himself, with a hand crank on one side.

  Sam reached out to touch the crank.

  “Wait!” Martina yelled. “Be careful!”

  Sam paused with his hand on the old piece of metal. “What? I just want to see what this does.”

  “Like you did with the armonica?” Martina asked. “Which almost got us all killed?”

  “Fine.” Sam pulled his hand back. “You come up with an idea, then. How are we going to get through that door? Don’t you think this crank has something to do with it?”

  “I never said it didn’t.” Martina pressed her lips together, looking hard at the metal box and at Sam. “I just said be careful. Think before you start fooling around with things.”

  “How long do you want to take to think? Until Flintlock blows a hole through that last door?” Sam shook his head. “Look around, Marty. There’s nothing else to try. All we’ve got is a metal cube and a crank. So I’m turning the crank.” He grabbed hold of the crank, ignoring Martina’s look of reproach, and pulled hard. Rusty metal groaned, and the thing began to turn.

  The machine started to hum. Sam recognized the sound. He’d heard it a million times—from a refrigerator, a computer, an air conditioner.

  Martina recognized it too. “Electricity! It must be some sort of mechanical generator.”

  “Of course!” Sam kept turning the handle. “This place is all about Ben Franklin, right? Everybody knows about Ben Franklin and the key and the kite! Of course there’s a puzzle using electricity!”

  “What kind of a puzzle, though?” Martina was looking around. “Stop cranking for a minute so we can think. The generator makes electricity when somebody turns the crank, but where does the electricity go?”

  “Along those wires,” Theo said, pointing at the wires that stretched from the metal box to the square plate on the floor.

  Sam let go of the crank and stepped back. “Okay, but that doesn’t get us anywhere. The thing about electricity is, it likes to travel in loops. Circuits.”

  “Oh, you were listening in science class?” Martina asked.

  “No, I was listening to my mom after I stuck a fork in an electrical socket.” He cast his mind back to that day, years ago, when he’d given himself a good zap and his mom explained what happened. When you plugged something—say, a lamp—into a socket and flipped a switch, it completed a circuit. Then the electricity could travel up the cord and into a light bulb, make the filament glow white-hot, and then travel back down. If the electricity didn’t have a cord to travel along, it would use anything that came in handy—like a fork in Sam’s hand, and then the rest of Sam’s body. Which was why he had promised to never, ever do that again.

  “We have to make a circuit,” Sam said, finishing his thought. “Join up the generator to the door. I bet that’ll open it.”

  “With what, though?” Martina asked. “It has to be something that will carry a current of electricity. Like wire, or metal, or—”

  “How about this?” Theo grunted, staggering back into the glow of Martina’s head lamp.

  He was dragging something along the floor—a huge metal oval. A link. For a chain.

  “Yes!” Sam broke into a grin. He’d been right once again. Sam Solomon: four; Ben Franklin: zero. You’re making this too easy, old guy. “Where’d you find it?”

  “Nearly tripped over it while we were climbing up that tunnel. I didn’t realize it was important.” Theo dropped the link by the generator. “There’s more.”

  “Here’s another one!” Martina shouted.

  Martina used her head lamp to hunt down the links, then stood next to each one until Sam or Theo arrived to drag them to the door. It was backbreaking work. Theo could heave one of the links up onto his shoulder and stagger back with it, but it was quicker to drag them. Sam had no choice—dragging was all he could manage.

  He’d done two to Theo’s five, and he was working on his third when Martina stopped him. “Hey, do you still have that Fugio cent?” she asked.

  “If you wanted one, you should have grabbed one of your own,” Sam grunted.

  “Just give it to me.”

  Sam didn’t have breath to spare for arguing. He dug in his pocket for the little copper coin, handed it to Martina, and went back to dragging.

  Martina stood still in the tunnel, the light from her head lamp focused on the coin in her hand.

  “It wouldn’t . . . kill you . . . to help me out here,” Sam pointed out, dumping his link by the generator.

  “Look at this,” she said, ignoring his comment.

  “Helping?” Sam asked. “Remember helping?”

  “I am helping,” Martina answered. “Look!”

  Sam went over to look at the penny, glad for the chance to rest his aching back and throbbing arms.

  “See this chain?” Martina pointed to the picture on one side of the old coin. “Made of links?”

  “Yeah. I see.” Sam rubbed his sore hands. “They look like miniature versions of these big ones.”

  “That’s right. And there are thirteen links shown on the coin. I bet we need to find thirteen here in the tunnel.”

  Sam nodded,
counting up the ones they had already connected. “Looks like we’ve got five to go, then!”

  With Sam and Martina both dragging one link, they could nearly keep up with Theo. The fact that he’d had a dislocated shoulder not long ago didn’t seem to slow him down.

  “Franklin designed the Fugio cent himself, you know,” Martina chattered as they dragged.

  “Uh.” Sam grunted his answer.

  “Thirteen links in the chain, you see. The number thirteen was a big deal to him. Thirteen colonies, of course. But he also had a list of thirteen virtues that he lived by.”

  “Hey, watch it. My toe. Watch out for my toe!”

  “Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution . . .”

  “Over there.” Sam pointed. “There’s another one.”

  “Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice . . .”

  “Pull. Harder.”

  Theo tugged the eleventh link of chain past them, and Sam caught the look of amusement on his face. It was all fine and good for Theo. He wasn’t stuck carrying chains with Martina.

  “Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and . . . and . . . there’s one more. I can’t remember it. Shoot. I know there’s one more.”

  “Wasn’t one of those virtues ‘silence’?” Sam asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So how come you’re still talking?”

  Martina scowled at him but shut up at last, and between them they hauled the twelfth link over to the pile that they had heaped up between the generator and the door. According to Martina and the Fugio cent, there should be one more somewhere.

  “Sam, you start fastening up the links,” Theo suggested. “Martina, bring the light and we’ll look for the last one.”

  Left alone, fumbling in the near dark, Sam heaved the links of chain into place, connecting them like the world’s largest necklace. This would be much easier with Martina and her light.

  “Hey, guys?” he said. “I could use a hand here?”

  “Still looking,” said Martina from farther up the tunnel, her head lamp bobbing.

  Finally, as he was hooking up the twelfth link, he heard their footsteps approaching.

  “Last one?” Sam looked up, squinting in the glare of Martina’s head lamp.

  “There aren’t any more,” Theo reported.

  “What?”

  “We can’t find the last one.” Martina sounded worried. “We must have missed something.”

  “Well, maybe there are only twelve. Maybe it’ll stretch.” He crouched down to heave them all into position. “Help me.”

  It was a couple of minutes before they laid all the links out as far as they’d go, but when they were done, they were still a couple of feet short of joining the loop on the door.

  “C’mon, pull!” said Sam. “We can make it!”

  “No,” Martina said. “There has to be thirteen. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

  “The chain doesn’t have to be thirteen links long.” Sam shook his head. “It just has to be long enough to reach the door.”

  “Sam, how much do you know about history?”

  “Marty, how much do you want to get out of here?”

  “We have to get this right. Remember”—Martina gulped—“what happened on the top of the mountain? When we were wrong?”

  Remember? Sam wasn’t likely to forget a guy bursting into flames, even if it was a guy he didn’t particularly like. “Yeah. But, Marty . . .”

  “I told you not to call me that!”

  “Come on!” Sam’s voice cracked with impatience. “We can’t just stand here and argue all day! We’ve got to try!”

  “Like you tried with the armonica? You nearly got us all killed!”

  “Not really fair,” Theo spoke up. “Sam couldn’t have known what would happen.”

  “Thank you!” said Sam, slightly surprised.

  “But we can’t just try stuff randomly,” Martina said. “We have to think it out. You like sudoku puzzles, right, Sam? What happens if you get careless and put in one wrong number? You lose any chance of getting the rest of the puzzle right. Maybe the same thing could happen here. We’ve got to get this right! And thirteen is right!”

  “You always think you know best! Martina Wright is always right!” Sam snapped. “You’ve got the facts, you’ve done the research, you’re a walking Wikipedia! Good for you! But when are you actually going to do something instead of standing there arguing with me?”

  Sam waited for Martina to yell back.

  But she didn’t.

  “Not really fair either,” Theo said into the silence.

  Martina was staring down at the links of chain that lay like a clunky metal snake along the floor, her shoulders slumped. “The thirteenth virtue,” Sam heard her whisper, her voice sounding louder as it echoed off the stone walls all around.

  Then she straightened up, her voice oddly level. “I remember now. Start cranking the generator, Sam.”

  “What?” Sam stared at her. “Why should I? The circuit isn’t finished. It won’t do anything. The electricity has nowhere to go.”

  Sam saw her face flush with anger. “Just do it! You wanted to stop arguing—so stop!” She took a deep breath. When she met Sam’s eyes again, she looked more serious than Sam had ever seen her. “Trust me,” she said.

  Sam looked at Theo. Theo shrugged.

  “Okay,” Sam agreed. He grabbed the handle of the generator and yanked.

  After a few turns, he heard the humming start up. He turned the crank faster.

  Martina walked slowly away from him until she was right next to the door. The end of the chain lay at her feet.

  “Don’t stop cranking, Sam. No matter what happens.”

  Martina took hold of the metal loop in the doorway. Then she leaned down toward the chain that lay on the ground.

  “Marty! Stop! Don’t touch that!” Sam called out. What did that crazy girl think she was doing? Didn’t she realize that electricity was surging through that chain?

  “Martina!” Theo shouted. “No!”

  She ignored them. Her free hand was trembling as she closed it over the twelfth metal link.

  Martina’s body shook as if she were a puppet with a madman yanking at the strings. Sam snatched his hand away from the generator’s handle, but to his horror, the handle continued to whirl around under its own power, too fast now for him to stop without breaking his fingers.

  Rusty metal squealed, and a crack of light blazed between the cave wall and the edge of the iron door as it swung open.

  Martina dropped to the floor as if the puppeteer had tossed her away, and lay there—still as death.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sam threw himself down at Martina’s side. Theo was already there, stripping off her backpack and sliding a hand beneath her neck, turning her body face up. Her eyes were half-open, but she didn’t seem to be seeing anything. Her mouth was slack. Sam smelled burned hair. Theo grabbed her wrist, feeling for a pulse.

  Sam felt sick. Just a moment ago, he’d been yelling at Martina for talking too much—and now she might never speak again. “Marty,” he murmured, shaking her by the shoulders. “Wake up, Marty. You did it. You got the door open. We can get out of here.” She didn’t move. “Marty!” Sam repeated, shouting now.

  “She might need mouth-to-mouth,” Theo said.

  “Really?” Sam gulped. But this was not a moment to wimp out. “Okay. Mouth-to-mouth. Right.”

  Sam licked his lips and bent to get closer to Martina’s face. It’s just like health class, Sam told himself. Except this time it’s not a dummy. Well, Martina is a dummy for electrocuting herself in the first place! Sam scolded himself. She saved you. She saved your life and opened that door. The least you could do is try to save hers! “Okay, here I go.” He cupped Martina’s chin with one hand and held her nose with the other.

  “Sorry, Marty,” he whispered, leaning close to her face.

  He sucked in a deep breath, opened his mouth, and—

  “S
am?”

  Martina’s eyes had flipped open. She was staring straight at him, and she looked just as panicked as Sam felt, finding his face two inches from hers.

  “Who do you think I am, Sleeping Beauty?” she said, recoiling. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just trying to save your life!” Sam replied. “Some thanks I get for that!”

  “Oh,” Martina said, sitting up shakily. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “What were you thinking, Marty?” Sam asked. “That was crazy. You could have been toast. Actual toast.”

  Martina leaned back against the cave wall. Her hair still drifted spookily through the air, as if alive. But her voice was steady. “I was thinking about the thirteenth virtue.”

  “The what?”

  “Remember? I started telling you about it while we were moving the links. Benjamin Franklin had a list of thirteen virtues. Like the thirteen links of the chain.”

  “Right, but we only found twelve.”

  “Exactly. Because the thirteenth virtue is Humility. You know, not thinking you’re better than anybody else. Or that you know everything.”

  Sam blinked in astonishment. Was Martina Wright actually blushing?

  “Franklin said people should try to ‘be like Jesus and Socrates,’” she went on. “Sacrificing themselves for the common good. So I thought that might be the answer. To complete the puzzle, one person had to be humble enough to risk her own life so that the others might go on. She had to realize that her own well-being wasn’t as important as the quest itself.”

  Whoa. Sam shook his head, amazed. Martina had more guts than he’d ever imagined.

  “Like you did in that mine shaft, Sam. You risked drowning to save us all. I thought you had drowned, for a minute. I was so scared you were dead. So I thought—maybe I could be as brave as you were. Maybe that’s what Benjamin Franklin would have expected me to do.”

  Sam couldn’t think of a single word to say.

  “Socrates said, ‘The only thing I know, is that I know nothing,’” Martina went on, her voice trembling. “I act like a know-it-all sometimes, it’s true. Like I’ve got all the answers. But I want to do things too. Not just talk. Like you said, Sam. I wanted to prove it to you both. And to me.” She looked at the floor.