Nick and Tesla's Solar-Powered Showdown

by Bob Pflugfelder

  • Plastic wrap

  • Scissors

  • A hobby knife or box cutter

  • A nail or toothpick

  • Safety goggles

  • A responsible adult

  THE SETUP

  1. Assemble the PVC pieces as shown to form the signal cannon. If needed, fasten the connections using glue designed for plastic.

  2. Line up the ends of the balloons. Tie them in a knot near the closed ends, leaving at least 4 inches (10 cm) of balloon free. Tie one end of the p-cord around the balloons, just next to the knot, on the long side, as shown.

  3. As shown in the first Illustration, slip the free end of the cord, and the balloon knot, into the T-connector. The free ends of the balloons should hang out the front of the cannon. Spread the ends evenly around the opening of the pipe and tape them in place, leaving about 2 inches (5 cm) of balloon length inside the pipe. Trim the free ends of the balloons.

  4. Tie a loop in the free end of the p-cord to form a handle.

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. For each signal, tape an LED bulb to a battery, with one wire touching each side of the battery. The longer wire should touch the positive (+) side of the battery; if the bulb doesn’t light, switch the sides that the wires touch.

  2. Ask your responsible adult to use the knife or box cutter to cut a slit in a ping-pong ball slightly larger than the battery. Carefully place the lit LED and battery into the ping-pong ball, squeezing the ball just enough to widen the slit and fit them inside. Once they’re in, stuff the ball with enough plastic wrap to keep the battery from rattling around. You can use a nail or toothpick to pack the wrap in place.

  3. Your signal cannon is ready to fire! Put on your safety goggles and go outside. Point the launcher upward and place the ping-pong ball loosely into the front of the launcher. (Don’t push the ball down; let it rest on top of the balloons.)

  4. DON’T POINT THE CANNON AT ANYONE! BE SAFE!!!

  5. To launch a flare, pull back hard on the cord handle and quickly release it. The knot inside will hit the ping-pong ball and send it flying into the air. Practice to find the best way to launch for maximum distance and height. During the day, you can use regular, unlit ping-pong balls. They usually fly even higher.

  6. A tip to shoot your signals even farther: Ask a helper to place the ping-pong ball on the launcher while you pull the cord. But don’t forget Final Step number 4: Be careful and stay safe!

  5 Nick and Tesla’s High-Voltage Danger Lab.—The authors

  6 Nick and Tesla’s Robot Army Rampage.—The authors

  7 Nick and Tesla’s Secret Agent Gadget Battle.—The authors

  8 Nick and Tesla’s Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove.—The authors

  9 Nick and Tesla’s Special Effects Spectacular.—The authors

  10 Are you tired of footnotes yet? Because we are.—The authors

  Though plenty of LEDs were indeed stashed around the house, they came in only three colors. So Uncle Newt proposed the following signals.

  If he shot up a blue LED, it meant that he’d found the offices of Sun King Solar Solutions and the coast was clear.

  If he shot up a white LED, then he’d found the Sun King Solar Solutions offices but the kids were to keep their distance.

  And if he shot up a red LED, they were to run for their lives (and send help for him if they made it).

  Nick and Tesla nodded, satisfied but a little unnerved when Uncle Newt explained the meaning of the red signal. The three of them were still in the basement laboratory, going over the signals with Uncle Newt while Silas and DeMarco waited upstairs. (The pair was freaked out by the lab’s buzzing, sizzling machines and ooze-covered test tubes. And by the HAZARDOUS, POISON, and HIGH VOLTAGE signs on the door.)

  “That’ll work,” Tesla said. “Let’s pack up the launcher and—”

  “But I wasn’t done,” Uncle Newt said.

  And so he went on:

  If he shot up a blue LED followed by a red one, it meant that he’d found Nick and Tesla’s parents and all was well.

  If he shot up a blue LED and then a white one, it meant that he’d found Nick and Tesla’s parents but the kids should keep lying low.

  If he shot up two blue LEDs in quick succession, it meant that he’d found Nick and Tesla’s parents but the kids should contact the authorities immediately.

  But if he shot up a blue LED followed by a white one, a red one, and then another blue one, it meant that the kids should—

  That’s when Nick cut him off. “These are getting pretty complicated,” he said. “Couldn’t we just stick with the first three?”

  Uncle Newt held up a sheet of notebook paper he’d been scribbling on. On it was a very, very long list.

  “But I’ve got so many more!” Uncle Newt protested. “You’d be amazed how much you can say with combinations of just three colors.”

  “You’re not supposed to amaze us. You’re supposed to tell us whether the place is safe or not,” Tesla pointed out. “Anything more than that is just going to be confusing.”

  Uncle Newt’s shoulders sagged. “I guess you’re right,” he said. He folded the sheet of paper and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his stain-speckled lab coat. “We ought to go, then. The sun’s probably down already.”

  They loaded the cannon and a dozen LED-stuffed ping-pong balls into the only backpack in the house—a pink one with a drawing of a wide-eyed kitten and the words AIN’T I JUST THE CUTEST? embroidered on the back. Uncle Newt slung the backpack over one shoulder and led Nick and Tesla up the stairs and out the back door.

  Uncle Newt was right about the sun having set. It was dusk.

  Silas and DeMarco fell in behind and the group walked around the house, eventually reaching the large, ungainly vehicle parked in the driveway.

  Uncle Newt had built the Newtmobile himself, which was why it looked like a cross between a jeep, a fishing boat, and a big green brick. He climbed in behind the wheel; Silas quickly called shotgun. The rest of the kids squeezed into the back seat.

  Uncle Newt brought the vehicle roaring to life, backed out, and drove all of two blocks before pulling over and shutting off the engine.

  “Why are we stopping?” DeMarco asked.

  Uncle Newt nodded at two nearby houses.

  “That’s where you and Cyrus live, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yeah?” said Silas. “So?”

  DeMarco figured it out more quickly. “Oh, come on!” he said. “You can’t leave us behind!”

  “Sorry. I’m not going to put a couple eleven-year-olds in danger,” Uncle Newt said.

  “What about them?” DeMarco said, jerking a thumb at Nick and Tesla.

  Uncle Newt shrugged. “That’s different. They’re family.”

  “Fair enough,” Silas said (though if asked what was so fair about endangering one’s relatives, he wouldn’t’ve been able to tell you). “But consider this: DeMarco and I aren’t eleven. We’re twelve!”

  “Oh, really? Twelve?” Uncle Newt said. He mulled over this new information but still shook his head. “Nah. Maybe if you were thirteen. Sorry. Out.”

  Silas opened the passenger door and slid from his seat.

  “Awww, man,” he said, moaning. “This is so bogus.”

  “Let us know how it goes,” DeMarco said to Nick and Tesla. And then he got out, too.

  “Don’t get killed without us!” Silas called as the Newtmobile pulled away.

  “That sounds like you want them to wait to get killed until we’re there to get killed with them,” DeMarco said.

  “Oh. Right.” Silas cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed with all of his considerable might. “I MEAN, DON’T GET KILLED AT ALL!!!”

  Several porch lights came on along the block, and a dog howled mournfully in the distance.

  “Why can’t you just say ‘Good luck’ like a normal person?” Silas said with a sigh.

  “All right. I will.” Silas sucked in a deep breath and cupped his hands around h
is mouth again.

  “Don’t bother,” DeMarco said, nodding at the now empty street. “They’re already gone.”

  Nick and Tesla couldn’t do much planning on the way to the Sun King Solar Solutions headquarters in Mountain View. The Newtmobile had a fold-up convertible top that Uncle Newt had motorized because, as he put it, “Why the heck not?”

  The answer to his supposedly rhetorical question being, “Because if it breaks we won’t be able to get the top up at all.” Which is why, as they sped down the highway, with their hair flying wildly in the wind, conversation was limited to “I CAN’T HEAR MYSELF THINK!” and “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” and “I ATE A BUG!” and “I HATE CONVERTIBLES!”

  After about half an hour on the road, they pulled off the interstate and into a town that was larger, busier, and more immaculately manicured than funky little Half Moon Bay. As the name promised, there were mountains to view in the town of Mountain View (though at this time of the evening they were just black blobs that blotted out the horizon). Nearby were well-groomed lawns and tall palm and eucalyptus trees and ultramodern office buildings adorned with familiar names spelled out in big, glowing letters.

  Netscape. Google. Symantec. Mozilla. Froofroo. Cheezel. Splonk!

  (Nick and Tesla hadn’t heard of Froofroo, Cheezel, or Splonk!, but the companies had impressive- looking logos on the signs in front of their even more impressive-looking offices.)

  They saw no sign for Sun King Solar Solutions, however, even when they pulled up to the address Uncle Newt had found online: 1527 Harrington Avenue.

  The property was no sleek, stylish, smoked-glass-and-chrome office complex. It was a rusty, dumpy warehouse surrounded by other rusty, dumpy warehouses and a large, dark parking lot.

  “Doesn’t look very high-tech,” Tesla said.

  “Looks can be deceiving,” said Uncle Newt. “About ten minutes from here is the garage where Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computer. That place doesn’t look very impressive, either.”

  “Maybe,” Nick said, nodding at the shabby, shadowy warehouses. “But I bet it doesn’t look like someplace Dr. Frankenstein would hang out.”

  Uncle Newt circled around and parked on the street; he and Nick and Tesla sat in silence and watched the parking lot for a while. No one came or went. Every so often a car would zip past on Harrington Avenue, but other than that, they seemed to be completely alone.

  Eventually, Uncle Newt reached into the back of the Newtmobile and picked up the kitty-cat backpack.

  “Well, I guess it’s time to get this show on the road,” he said. “Remember—don’t come any closer unless you see the red LED signal.”

  “I thought we were supposed to run away if we saw the red signal,” Nick said.

  Uncle Newt shook his head. “No. That’s the white signal.”

  Tesla shook her head. “No. White means we’re supposed to stay where we are.”

  Uncle Newt rubbed his chin. “Really? I thought that was blue.”

  “Blue means the coast is clear,” said Nick.

  “I don’t think so,” said Uncle Newt.

  “Look,” Tesla said, “let’s keep it simple. Blue is good. Red is bad. OK?”

  “What about white?” Uncle Newt asked.

  Tesla shrugged. “We don’t need it.”

  Uncle Newt looked crestfallen. “But we made the white LED ping-pong balls! It would be a shame not to use them. Why don’t we say that white means—”

  “Uncle Newt!” Nick cried. “The longer we sit here talking, the more likely someone’s going to spot us!”

  “Good point.”

  Uncle Newt got out of the Newtmobile and slammed the door so hard, it made Nick wince.

  “Try to be a little sneaky, Uncle Newt,” Tesla said helpfully. “You know: Quiet. Inconspicuous.”

  “Hey—when am I ever conspicuous?” Uncle Newt said.

  He flashed his niece and nephew a reassuring smile. But the twins would’ve been more reassured if the smile wasn’t coming from a man with a raging case of bedhead wearing a filthy, scorch-marked lab coat and a T-shirt with YOU’RE WITH GENIUS á printed across the front in neon-yellow letters.

  “All right,” Uncle Newt said, slapping his hands together. (At the loud clap, Nick winced again.) “Time to find your parents.”

  Uncle Newt gave Nick and Tesla a thumbs-up and then turned and headed toward the warehouses. Once in the parking lot, he hunched over and started crouch-walking in a serpentine pattern across the cracked asphalt.

  “Uhh … is that supposed to be stealthy?” Nick asked.

  “I guess,” said Tesla.

  They were both tempted to shout “Stand up straight and hurry!” but that would have just drawn more attention.

  Eventually, Uncle Newt swerved around the corner of the nearest warehouse and ducked out of sight.

  “Of course,” said Tesla, “if the bad guys are in there, then Uncle Newt might not even have time to send us a signal before they grab him.”

  “We promised to wait here,” Nick said.

  “We’ve done a lot more sneaking around this summer than Uncle Newt has,” Tesla said. “We’ve gotten pretty good at it. If we followed him, just to keep an eye on him, he’d probably never know.”

  “We promised to wait here,” Nick said again.

  “We didn’t solve all those mysteries this summer by sitting around waiting for someone else to do the work,” Tesla retorted, trying to convince her brother. “And this time, it’s personal.”

  “We promised to—”

  A small, white ball of light shot out from somewhere behind the warehouses, arcing across the parking lot.

  “Let’s go!” Tesla said.

  She jumped out of the Newtmobile and charged across the street.

  Nick hesitated only a moment before dashing after his sister.

  “What does the white LED even mean?” he asked as he followed her toward the warehouses.

  “I have no idea!”

  Up ahead, a red ball of light rocketed into the sky.

  “I know what that means, though!” Tesla said.

  “Me, too!” said Nick. “Trouble!”

  Yet neither one slowed down. They reached the corner where their uncle had disappeared just as a third light—this time, a blue one—soared overhead.

  “What is going on?” said Nick.

  As they rounded the corner, Nick and Tesla found their uncle Newt calmly returning the LED cannon to his kitty backpack.

  “Hey, kids,” he said with a nonchalant wave when he noticed the twins gasping for air a few feet away. “I couldn’t remember which color meant what, so I just used them all.”

  Nick rolled his eyes and sighed.

  Tesla gritted her teeth and growled.

  “Did you find something?” Nick asked.

  “Yes and no. Come on. I’ll show you.”

  Uncle Newt turned and headed toward the warehouse marked 1527. He led Nick and Tesla around the nearest corner and then stopped at a door. It had a window, and white words were stenciled on the glass.

  SUITE B

  SUN KING SOLAR SOLUTIONS

  Tesla pushed on the door—Why not try? she figured—but it was locked. She cupped her hands to the glass and peered inside. Nick stepped up beside her and did the same.

  The only light in the room was coming from a street lamp throwing a dull glow from behind them. But one thing was obvious despite the gloom and shadows inside.

  The place was deserted. There were no desks, no chairs, no filing cabinets. Nothing on the walls. Nothing on the floor—not even carpet.

  “Great,” Nick said with a groan. “They went out of business.”

  “If they were ever really in business to begin with,” said Tesla. “This could have just been a … a … What do you call it when someone starts a fake company?”

  “A prank?” Uncle Newt suggested.

  Tesla shook her head.

  Uncle Newt tried again. “A joke? A gag? A trick? A cap
er? A lark?”

  Tesla kept shaking her head.

  “A front,” Nick said.

  Tesla nodded. “A front company. That’s it. When someone wants to, you know, do businessy stuff without anyone knowing who it is.”

  Uncle Newt looked at his niece and nephew in amazement. “How do you two know so much about white-collar crime?”

  “You’d be surprised what you can pick up from Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys,” Nick said.

  “Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell if we’re right,” said Tesla. “For all we know, this was a real company that closed down months ago.”

  Nick—aka “Little Mr. Sunshine,” aka “Mr. Worst-Case Scenario”—couldn’t resist summing up what that meant. “And that means we’ve been wasting our time … and we’re out of clues.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Tesla shot back. She stepped to the side and bent down, hoping a different angle might reveal something new inside the abandoned office. “We’d just have to—hey!”

  Something had crunched underfoot when she moved.

  Tesla looked down and saw a small piece of yellow paper sticking out from under her shoe. She moved her foot and picked it up. As she smoothed out the paper, she saw that it was perfectly square, with a sticky strip running along one side.

  A Post-it note. And written on it were four words:

  THEY KNEW YOU WERE

  Nick gasped. “That’s Mom’s handwriting!”

  “Are you sure?” Uncle Newt asked.

  “Of course I’m sure! I’ve seen a million things written in that writing! Grocery lists. ‘Happy birthday!’ ‘Please excuse Nick from gym—he’s not feeling well.’ I’m telling you, our mom wrote that. I’m sure of it.”

  “Me, too,” said Tesla. Her voice cracked in a way she wasn’t expecting, and her hands began to tremble. The note she was holding was the closest she’d come to her parents in weeks. It was the only proof the twins had that at least one of them was still alive.