They ran only a few feet when a quick slope led them down into a dry riverbed.
“Astrid, let’s follow this around,”suggested Valerie. “It leads away from the airfield.”
“You can see better than I can,”said Astrid. “You lead the way.”
They hadn’t started again, however, when the loud whine of a jet engine announced the arrival of an airplane. Seconds later it shot over the mountains to the east and began to descend to the airfield.
“Don’t move,”said a gruff voice from above them on the riverbank.
“Astrid,”said Valerie. “He’s got a gun pointed at us.”
Despite the gun trained on her, the girl inventor looked right and left for some way of escape, but a second figure was suddenly looming above her in the darkness. Rough hands grabbed her by the shoulder and marched her toward the man with the gun.
“Is it her?”asked the man holding her, once they were beside his comrade.
“Yeah, it’s her.”
“Good.”
The man with the rough hands continued to hold onto Astrid and push her along through the desert as they marched back to the hanger. The plane they had seen arriving was now taxiing toward the building. Astrid struggled to think of what to do now, but her brain couldn’t seem to get past the immediate danger long enough to come up with a plan. She was thinking so hard that she stumbled when they stepped from the sand onto the tarmac.
The two girls and the two men escorting them walked around to the front of the building. The plane had pulled almost up to where the van was still burning and waited with its door open. Astrid was not pleased to see that it was a Lear Jet 85. Flying at more than three fourths the speed of sound, and with a range of more than 3000 nautical miles, the craft could carry her and her robot friend out of the country before anyone could find her. She was still thinking about the abysmal situation when what seemed like hundreds of lights ended the darkness.
More than two dozen vehicles rushed in from the surrounding desert to encircle the plane, the vans, the hanger, and the people standing in front of it. Three helicopters swooped down, each of them shining great spotlights down as they circled. The vehicles stopped and dozens of men in navy blue combat gear and carrying automatic rifles rushed forward. They were all shouting.
The kidnappers threw down their weapons and dropped to the ground. Astrid put her hands up in the air. One of the blue clad figures scooped her up and whisked her toward the bright lights of the newly arrived trucks. She saw that another man was guiding Valerie along with them. The man who was carrying her set her carefully down near the back of an ambulance.
“Are you hurt, Astrid?”asked a familiar voice.
The girl inventor stared at the man. Like all of the other new arrivals, he was covered in body armor and wore a hood covering his face beneath a combat helmet. Seeing her confusion, he took off the helmet and peeled away the hood.
“Dad?”squeaked Astrid. “What are you doing here and why are you dressed like a commando?”
“Well, it’s not really much fun to play commando if you don’t get to dress the part, is it?”
She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed.
“Valerie?”
“Poppy!”shouted Valerie, seeing Mr. Diaz, who was dressed like Dr. Maxxim, though he wore his helmet without a hood.
He gave the robot girl a quick hug.
“I hope you brought your handcuff key,”she said.
“Of course,”he replied, and then quickly unlocked her shackles.
Astrid’s father guided her back to a seated position in the ambulance.
“We have to get you checked out, Sweetie.”
“Thank goodness you’re safe,”said Chief Gillespie, stepping from around the medical vehicle. “I tried to tell you that you didn’t need to chase after these guys, Astrid. We were following them the whole time.”
“You were?”
“Your father placed a GPS and satellite communicator inside your robot after the last incident.”
“My name is Valerie,”said Valerie, stamping her foot.
“Oh, um yes…”said Gillespie.
“I doubt Astrid would have turned around even if you had managed to give her that bit of information,”said Dr. Maxxim. “She has a bit of a stubborn streak in her, and I suspect there’s a bit of daredevil in there too.”
“Runs in the family,”said the Chief, casting an eye at Dr. Maxxim’s blue combat fatigues.
Just as emergency medical technician was beginning her examination, Astrid saw something over his shoulder. A figure was walking out of the desert toward them.
“Look out!”shouted Astrid. “Quick, somebody get that guy!”
“Calm down, Astrid,”said her father. “That’s just Mr. Toulson.”
“I know who he is! He’s one of the kidnappers! He was with them!”
Toulson stopped beside her father.
“Quick Chief!”shouted Astrid. “Shoot him!”
“Astrid,”said her father, firmly taking hold of her shoulder. “Mr. Toulson is not one of the bad guys. He works for Interpol. He had infiltrated this spy ring before he ever came to Maxxim City. He was a double agent, working on the inside and pretending to help them.”
“It’s true, Astrid,”said Valerie. “Mr. Toulson said we needed to delay the kidnappers just long enough for help to get here, so when the others all ran to the front of the building to look at something, he knocked out the guard watching me and told me to run. That’s when I ran into you.”
“Are you sure?”asked Astrid.
“You don’t have to worry,”said Mr. Diaz. “I can vouch for Toulson. I worked with him years ago when I was in the FBI.”
Astrid looked at her bodyguard.
“Um…sorry,”she said.
“Nothing a couple of aspirin and an ice pack won’t fix,”he replied.
Chapter Twenty: All’s Well that Ends Well
The morning sun was already peaking over the mountains by the time the convoy of SUVs, emergency vehicles, and helicopters began the trip back to Maxxim City. Astrid’s father had sent several men in a truck to recover her hoverbike and it arrived home at the same time she did. Astrid immediately climbed up the stairs to her room and went to bed, grateful for once that it wasn’t a school day. She slept right through the morning and didn’t get up until 1 PM. When she descended the great staircase, she found Denise and the two Valeries waiting for her.
“We came over to hear all about your adventures,”said Denise. “We already heard Valerie’s tale, but you apparently had a whole day of adventures before chasing down home invaders.”
“I’ll tell you, but only if I can eat first,”replied Astrid.
“You can tell us all over lunch,”said her mother from the dining room door.
The girls followed her through the dining room and into the breakfast room, where the table was laid out with a large quantity of food, including huge piles of sandwiches cut into fourths. Astrid grabbed four pieces of four different sandwiches and scooped herself some potato salad as her mother poured her a glass of orange juice. Once she and the others had their plates loaded, Astrid told them all of her adventures, from finding Austin in the desert, to the home invasion, to her capture at the end of the attempt to rescue Valerie.
“That was quite a day,”said Regular Valerie. “You had more adventures than most people have in a lifetime.”
“And you got to ride your hoverbike with Toby’s arms around you,”said Denise.
Astrid grinned. “Yes, that was the best part.”
“No, the best part was getting back home alive,”said her mother.
“You’re right,”said Astrid. “But riding with Toby was a very close second.”
The next day Astrid rode to school with her dad and her day was somewhat a repeat of Sunday’s lunch. She was forced to tell the story of her adventures again and again, both to students and to her teachers.
“Well, I suppose you think you’re pretty special now,”
said Mark McGovern, blocking Astrid’s way into the Quad at lunch time.
“Take a hike, chump,”said Toby, suddenly beside her. His right arm was in a cast, but otherwise he was in his regular fine form.
“I thought you might not be here today,”said Astrid, paying no more attention to Mark. “I haven’t seen you until now.”
“That’s what happens when you don’t ride the monorail with us in the morning,”he said.
“I know, but…I was still looking for you.”
“Here I am,”he said. “And for the record, I think you’re pretty…um, special…now. But I guess I always did.”
“Thanks,”said Astrid. “Say, where did Mark go?”
The other boy had melted into the crowd.
Over lunch, which was sliced roast beef, steamed carrots, baked sweet potatoes, and chocolate chip cookies; Astrid once again described her adventures, this time to Christopher and Toby, though of course the latter already knew what had happened in the desert with Austin.
That evening at dinner, Astrid’s father handed her a large box wrapped in red paper with a blue bow on it.
“What’s this for?”wondered Astrid. “It’s not my birthday.”
“It’s a gift just because we love you,”he said.
She opened the box to find a motorcycle helmet painted the same shade of orange as her hoverbike.
“I know that you’re planning on riding that thing again soon,”said Dr. Maxxim. “But from now on, no riding without a helmet. I don’t care if you are chasing international spies and kidnappers.”
“And no riding without a bra,”added her mother.
On Wednesday, Astrid road her hoverbike to school. It excited the students and faculty more than the stories of her adventures on Monday. When school was over, more than a hundred students missed their train in order to watch her take off into the air across the Maxxim Campus towards the Business Offices Complex, where she had a meeting with a group of men from Detroit.
These men were automotive engineers and had come to license new technologies from Maxxim. They had been paying for the right to use Astricite for several years in their car’s electronics systems, and now they had come to see Astrid’s new batteries. They were suitably impressed, but when she gave them a demonstration of her new Astridium ceramic they were completely blown away. They began brainstorming all the ways that they could use the new compound—windshields, engine parts, body panels. Finally Astrid showed them the hoverbike. The men stood openmouthed as she flew it around the parking lot.
“This could put us out of business,”said one.
“Oh I don’t think so,”replied Astrid. “This won’t eliminate the need for a car any more than the Segway did. It might put a little pressure on you to make your cars better and more exciting though.”
“Perhaps you’d like to come and show us how to do that?”said another engineer.
“Maybe I will,”said Astrid.
Another man joined the group. He obviously wasn’t an engineer. He was introduced as Mr. Tonkin. Astrid recognized the name as the CEO of a major automaker.
“Let me ask you something, young lady,”he said. “We’ve used many of your products and technologies. What would you think about us using your name? We could make a Maxxim car line.”
“I don’t think so,”said Astrid. “We license out our patents, but it’s always been Maxxim policy that any product carrying the Maxxim name be manufactured by our people.”
“That’s what your CEO said as well.”
“I thought as much,”said Astrid.
“Perhaps we could force the issue,”he said. “It’s possible that our corporation could buy out Maxxim. It is a publicly traded company.”
“I haven’t looked at your financials,”said Astrid,“but I think it’s much more likely that Maxxim could buy you out. Then we could make Maxxim cars in the factories we acquired from you. We’d need to keep your engineers and your workers, but I guess we really wouldn’t need an extra CEO, would we?”
Mr. Tonkin looked as though he had bitten into a lemon, while his engineers snickered into their sleeves.
“Come along dear,”said Dr. Maxxim, arriving to usher her away.
“I always knew you were mine,”he said. “I guess this proves that you’re your mother’s daughter too.”
“What’s the matter, Dad?”asked Astrid, stopping to look up into her father’s face.
“Nothing’s the matter.”
“I can always tell when you’re upset about something. What is it?”
“Oh…DARPA cut the funding on my project. I put a lot of work into something that I thought could change the world, and now it’s all for nothing.”
“But you change the world all the time,”said Astrid.
“Look who’s talking,”said her father.
“Can you tell me what your project was now?”
“I’ll do better than that,”the senior Maxxim said. “I’ll show you.”
They walked to the monorail station and climbed aboard the next available train. The monorail took them across the campus’s desert floor to the Maxxim Air Field, and then turned north on a track that was completely new. They stopped at a newly constructed station and climbed out. Before them were huge buildings, and what was that…a rocket launch pad? Here was an entire spaceport facility in the middle of the Maxxim Campus and Astrid had never seen or even heard of it before.
She stared at her father. He shrugged.
“I was working on new spacecraft propulsion systems,”he said. “A new rocket engine and a new propulsion system for interplanetary space.”
“What kind of interplanetary propulsion system?”
“A differential sail.”
“That’s exciting,”said Astrid. “How far did you get?”
“I was really just getting started on the sail,”replied Dr. Maxxim. “The rocket engine is almost ready to test though.”
“How big is your rocket engine?
“Five hundred kilograms.”
“And what kind of thrust are we looking at?”she asked.
“I’m hoping to hit 2,000 kilonewtons.”
“Dad, that would be amazing,”said Astrid. “You know with your engines and my new Astridium, we might be able to build a horizontally launched space plane.”
“That would cost a lot of money to develop,”said Dr. Maxxim.
“But if we could build it, it would bring in all kinds of government and corporate contracts,”Astrid replied. “Even as a ferry to the International Space Station we could recoup our development costs. There are already a dozen companies working on launch vehicles and spacecraft. Shouldn’t Maxxim be in there too?”
Dr. Maxxim smiled.
“I would need a lot of help on this,”he said.
“It’s only two months till summer vacation,”said Astrid.
That Saturday was the last day of March. Joyland, Maxxim City’s local amusement park opened. Each year, the town’s kids and adults poured through the gates each weekend in March, April, and May; and then the park opened every day all summer long before going back to a weekend only schedule in September and then closing for winter in October. This first day was crowded but Astrid and her friends made their traditional first day pilgrimage. They rode the Screaming Pterodactyl and Texas Twister roller coasters, played miniature golf, and ate deep fried Twinkies. Toby even won an extra large teddy bear for Astrid by knocking down all six milk bottles, something Astrid had long ago decided had been rigged so as not to ever happen. All in all, it was a wonderful day, but Astrid didn’t enjoy it as much as she could have. She still worried about Austin.
Though her mother kept her informed on Austin’s improving condition, the fact that he was in a far away city meant that none of the gang could go visit him. He didn’t return to Maxxim City until Friday April sixth. The next morning his grandmother drove him to the Maxxim home, where he was greeted with shouts of“surprise!”when he entered the front door. Austin looked fully recovered. The doct
ors in Phoenix had saved his hand. While he was in the hospital, he had lost about ten pounds and didn’t seem quite as ungainly as he had before.
Astrid, Toby, Denise, the two Valeries, Christopher, all their parents and Toby’s great aunt, as well as Austin and his grandmother ate cake and ice cream, sang songs, and played silly games until almost eleven. Then Astrid called her friends together.
“Come on out back,”she said, giving Mr. Brown a wink. “I want to show you something.”
They went through the family room and out into the yard, the adults all following. Sitting neatly in a row just in front of the swimming pools were seven hoverbikes. The first was Astrid’s original orange, which she had modified to hold a second battery. The other bikes looked nothing like hers. They were sleek and ultra-modern and looked like they were ready for an air race.
“There are seven of them,”said Astrid. “One for each of us.”
The kids all whooped.
“What do you think, Austin?”she asked.
“The orange one is kind of old-fashioned,”he said. “I guess that one’s mine.”
“Don’t be silly,”she replied. “That’s mine. Yours is the blue one.”
“But that’s the coolest one!”he said, excitedly.
“I picked each one out special for you,”continued Astrid. “Denise, yours is yellow, of course.”
“Of course,”said Denise.
“Christopher’s is green.”
“Because my favorite color is green,”said Christopher.
“Right. Valerie…I mean Regular Valerie, yours is purple, and Robot Valerie, yours is purple with a metallic stripe.”
“They’re beautiful,”said the two Valeries at the same time.
“And Toby, yours is black…”
“Because I don’t have a favorite color,”Toby completed.
“Because it’s cool,”said Astrid.
“And they all have matching helmets,”said Dr. Maxxim. “Those are from me, and I don’t want to see any of you kids riding without one.”
The seven friends ran to the hoverbikes, jumped on, and began putting on their helmets.
“You also all need to sign these release forms,”said Mrs. Maxxim.
Astrid Maxxim and Her Amazing Hoverbike Page 10