Operation Sherlock

by Bruce Coville

  Most fascinating of all was the fact that the floor disappeared two-thirds of the way across the massive space. Where the polished marble ended, the sea surged and stirred restlessly, like some hungry, waiting thing.

  Trip felt himself drawn to it. He was starting across the floor for a closer look when the door they had come through slammed explosively behind them.

  “Well, boys,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Now that you’re here, what do you think of it?”

  Wendy Wendell scuffed along the road toward her new home, turning the day’s events over in her mind. The strange message they had found on the computer terminal made her nervous. Who could have sent it? And how? To do that the unknown sender either had to know the Phillipses’ secret code, or somehow have cracked the machine’s safeguards.

  But the people on the island who had the skills to crack that computer system—herself included—could have no conceivable reason to send them such a message.

  She thought again about going to her parents, or possibly even Dr. Hwa. But what evidence did they have? The message had vanished the moment Rachel touched the keyboard.

  Wendy shook her head, causing her blond pigtails to swish over her grubby sweatshirt. If only that microphone on Rachel’s collar hadn’t self-destructed!

  She kicked at a stone. She knew what kind of reaction they would get if they tried to tell the adults about their suspicions: the brush-off. She could imagine them shaking their heads and laughing among themselves about “those kids with their hyperactive imaginations.”

  They would worry for a little while that perhaps the kids were too bored, then forget the whole thing.

  So there’s no point in telling them, concluded Wendy. Until we can prove something, we’re on our own.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a hearty voice exclaiming, “Well, if it isn’t Little Wendy!”

  Wendy felt her face flush with rage. She hated being called “Little Wendy.” She looked up, a sharp retort on her tongue, then swallowed and stayed silent. Standing in front of her was the one person on Anza-bora Island she didn’t want to make any madder than he already had a right to be: Mr. Swenson from the motor pool.

  “You kids have a good time today?” the sandy-haired man asked jovially.

  “Yeah,” said Wendy cautiously.

  What was going on here? He didn’t sound mad. “Well, you can tell the others that I wanted to compliment you on the way you brought back the machines. A lot of the adults who use them don’t take as good care of them as you did.”

  Wendy banged her hand against the side of her head. She had to be hearing things!

  Mr. Swenson looked at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

  “Sure! Of course! I was just a little surprised. We were nervous about whether or not we had brought the machines back the way you would want them.” She paused, then decided to take a gamble. “Did you get our note?”

  Mr. Swenson looked puzzled. “Note?”

  “Uh, it was just a little thank-you note, for taking the time with us. Probably fell off or something. Well, it was nice talking with you. I have to go.” She hurried away, her brain racing. A blind man couldn’t have missed the dent they had left in Trip’s dune buggy. What was going on here?

  The house hadn’t stood empty for that long, only since the Air Force had pulled out. Yet it had a look of hollowness about it that showed anyone who cared enough to look that there was no one living in it.

  The figure walking cautiously up to the back door wanted it that way. Turning the knob carefully to avoid making any sound, he slipped in through the kitchen.

  He didn’t stop to look around. He had been here many times before, and already knew the way.

  He knew that beyond the kitchen was a living room.

  He knew, too, that on the north side of the living room was a work area where the officer who used to live here had kept a computer terminal that was linked to the island’s mainframe.

  Though the connection had been severed when the house was abandoned, it hadn’t taken much work to reconnect it.

  Pulling up a chair, the invader flipped a few switches. As the terminal whirred into life, he took out a notebook. Turning to the back of the book, he found the code he was seeking.

  The computer signaled that it was ready. Entering the string of numbers that would send his words where he wanted, the intruder chuckled as he began to tap out a menacing message.

  Power Play

  Beeping softly to itself, the Phillipses’ robot server rolled around the corner of the table to Roger’s place. Lifting the plate, it scraped the chicken bones and other bits of food into a slot in its front. A whirring sound indicated that the scraps were being ground up; later, when the robot was done with its other work, it would compress the pulverized garbage into a small brick, which it would deodorize and deposit in the garbage can.

  Next the robot grabbed Roger’s silverware and dumped it through a little door in its side. The pieces landed with a clatter among the utensils it had already gathered.

  “All clear!” it announced. Then it rolled back to the kitchen, washing the silverware inside itself as it traveled.

  “Throckmorton has been working pretty well since we replaced that chip,” said Dr. Phillips.

  “It’s certainly an improvement over the night he stacked the garbage and ground up the plates,” said Rachel.

  Dr. Phillips winced at the memory. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t had half the people I work with over for dinner that night.”

  The twins laughed as they recalled the confusion the malfunctioning robot had caused.

  “Of course, that could hardly happen here,” said Roger. “Dr. Remov would jump up and fix it on the spot.”

  He winked at Rachel, who settled back to see how much information her twin could pull out of their father this time.

  “Now, there you go again,” said Dr. Phillips. He took a sip of his coffee, which he had barely rescued from Throckmorton’s cleanup mission. “I don’t know where you got the idea that Dr. Remov is an expert on robotics. His specialty is code systems—both how to encode material for a computer to use, and how to create codes so that no one else can get at the stuff. He’s such a nut on the subject I sometimes wonder if there isn’t a secret message written in his freckles.”

  “It must be a relief to have someone like that on a project this important,” said Roger.

  “It sure is,” said Dr. Phillips. “If we can actually create—”

  He stopped in midsentence, put down his coffee cup, and glared at his son. “Roger, are you trying to pump me for information?”

  It would have been hard to find a baby that looked more innocent than Roger Phillips did at that instant. “I was just making conversation, Dad,” he said, a wounded note in his voice.

  “Well, let’s converse about something else,” said his father.

  Rachel held her stomach and tried to keep from laughing.

  “Do you always walk into a place without knocking?”

  The speaker, a tall blond woman who appeared to be in her late thirties, had her arms folded over her chest. Her eyes were dark and fierce.

  Trip moved a step closer to Ray. He tried to calm himself, to slow his heart, which was beating against his ribs like a parakeet trying to escape from its cage.

  “We just wanted to see how this worked,” said Ray.

  Trip was impressed with his younger friend’s apparent coolness. Why couldn’t he be that calm?

  The woman arched an eyebrow. “A little scientific curiosity?”

  Suddenly Trip got angry. The tone of the question and the look on the woman’s face were identical to those of a teacher who had tormented him through one long and agonizing school year because she refused to believe he could possibly be interested in the things he wanted to learn about.

  “That’s right,” he said sharply. “That’s just what it is. And you needn’t act so superior. I suppose we shouldn’t have come in without asking, bu
t we certainly weren’t going to hurt anything. And we thought we might learn something. It’s not like there’s anything outside that says this place is top secret or off limits.”

  The woman seemed amused. “My name is Standish,” she said. “Dr. Sylvia Standish.”

  “We know,” said Ray. “We saw you the day the guard shack blew up.”

  A flicker of emotion passed over the woman’s face. “An unfortunate accident. I’m grateful that no one was hurt.”

  “Anyway, there’s no one on guard now,” said Trip. “So we thought it might be all right to come in.”

  With a heavy emphasis on the might, this was only a slight stretch of the truth.

  “That guard shack was only used when the air base was in operation,” said Dr. Standish. “We had a lot of people coming onto the island then, and the security seemed like a good idea. Once the Air Force left there was no need for a guard. A good thing, too, since it meant there was no one there when the shack blew up. The only reason we’ve had a guard posted out there the last few days was that some people were afraid the blast might actually have been aimed at the power plant.”

  She shook her head, as if the idea was too ridiculous to consider. “They pulled the guard this afternoon because Dr. Hwa finally decided that it was an accident. Which only makes sense. There’s no logical reason for anyone to want to sabotage this power plant.”

  “Could you tell us a little about how it works?” asked Trip.

  Dr. Standish smiled. Trip smiled back. He had yet to meet a scientist who didn’t get friendlier when asked to explain an idea.

  “The whole thing is based on very simple principles,” said Dr. Standish. “The most basic one is this: Every day trillions of tons of water move across the face of the earth in response to the pull of the moon. Properly harnessed, that would be an inexhaustible source of astonishing amounts of nonpolluting power. The trick, of course, is figuring out how to harness it. That’s what this installation is meant to do. Here, look at this.”

  Dr. Standish strode past the boys to where the marble floor met the sea. Again Trip felt the almost magnetic pull of the water.

  “Look down there,” said Dr. Standish.

  The water seemed only a few feet deep—except just in front of their feet, where a shaft plunged downward. Running down the right side of the shaft was a metal track that disappeared into the water.

  “That shaft goes down about fifty feet,” said Dr. Standish.

  Trip and Ray squinted into the murky depths, but could not see the bottom.

  “Wait here.” Dr. Standish strode to the control panel and threw a large switch. A light went on deep in the water, and they could see more clearly. At the bottom of the shaft was what appeared to be some sort of box.

  “I have a hundred of these shafts lined up here,” she said, motioning to either side of them. “At the bottom of each shaft is a box like the one you can make out down there. Now look up.” She pointed to the structures that thrust toward the ceiling. “When the tide is out, counterweights in those arms pull the boxes back to the level of the floor.”

  She made a gesture with her head. “Come here, I’ll show you one.”

  She led them to a work area several feet away. “This box is up for repair,” she said, gesturing to a clear cube about ten feet in height. Leaning against it was a grille made of the same clear material. The crisscrossing bars, each about as thick as a man’s little finger, divided it into inch-square boxes.

  “This goes across the top,” said Dr. Standish, tapping the grille. “It catches large debris that might clog the drains. When the boxes are pulled to the surface, the grille automatically pops up so that a powerful spray can clean off any gunk that has accumulated on it.”

  “What’s it made of?” asked Ray, walking around the enormous cube.

  “A new form of Plexiglass. It’s almost indestructible. Now, when the tide comes in, it fills this box with one thousand cubic feet of seawater.”

  “A little over thirty-two tons,” said Trip, doing a quick calculation.

  Dr. Standish looked impressed. “That weight carries the cube down the shaft. The depth of the shaft varies, according to the drilling conditions we encountered. Some of them go down a hundred feet or more.”

  “Let me guess,” said Trip. “You’ve got a turbine system that the tide boxes pull against. When they’re full, their weight rotates the turbines to generate electricity.”

  Dr. Standish nodded. “Very good.”

  “How do you get rid of the water?” asked Ray. “Once the tide goes out, the shafts must still be full.”

  “Three ways. First, there’s a drainage system at the bottom of each shaft. But that can only handle some of the water. We also have a siphon system. But again, that can only handle some of the water. The rest is pumped out, which, of course, uses up some of the energy. Too much. That’s the main flaw in the system right now. Once the shafts are drained, the counterweights draw the boxes back to the surface and the whole cycle starts over again. It’s a nearly perfect system—a power source we can’t use up and that causes absolutely no pollution.”

  “Awesome,” said Trip. “Why aren’t more of these being built?”

  “Cost.”

  The bitter tone in Dr. Standish’s voice was so harsh it made the boys catch their breath.

  “Cost,” she repeated. “And blindness. This installation was designed to prove the concept can work. But right now the power it generates is too expensive to make it a reasonable alternative to nuclear plants, primarily because of the drainage problem. Given this situation, does the government provide the research money needed to solve the final problems and make this clean, efficient source of unlimited power more economical? Don’t be silly. It funds another computer!”

  With that she turned on her heel and stalked away, leaving the boys alone at the edge of the water.

  Wendy Wendell III could never figure out which was worse: when her mother didn’t cook—or when she did.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings Mom,” she said. “But a burger would have been just fine.”

  “Oh, piffle,” said Wendy Wendell II. “You’d take a burger over anything—and almost anything in the shape of a burger, which will probably get you in trouble someday. It’s good for you to try some other foods.”

  “I know,” sighed the Wonderchild, gazing down at the mess on her plate. “But seaweed and tofu? I mean, it looks—”

  “Wendy!” warned her father, Dr. Werner Watson, inventor of the famous Watson Double Memory System. “Not at the table!”

  “That would have been good advice for this food,” said Wendy under her breath.

  “Captain Wendy! Captain Wendy!” cried Mr. Pumpkiss, who was waddling down the hall with Blondie and Baby Pee Pants marching along behind him. “You’ve got a message, Captain Wendy.”

  Wendy looked at her parents. “I’d better go check this out. It might be important.”

  Her mother shrugged. Taking that as permission, Wendy was out of her chair before either of her parents could say a word. Scooping up Pumpkiss and the girls, she shot down the hall to her room.

  The message light was blinking on her computer. Wendy sat down and typed in a command, then waited expectantly, thinking perhaps it was something important from one of the gang.

  The terminal whirred briefly, then red letters began to dance across the screen.

  BEWARE. YOUR DOOM IS WAITING.

  Wendy let out a little scream. But before her parents could make it to her room, the message had vanished.

  Remov and Mercury

  The gang gathered, according to plan, on the small spit of land that thrust out into the ocean. A stiff breeze, warm and pleasantly salty, was making whitecaps on the water.

  Trip and Ray started the meeting by thrilling the others with the story of their escapade in the power plant.

  Next Wendy told her story.

  “It was like getting a crank phone call by computer,” she said, describi
ng the ominous message to the rest of the group. “Between that and the talk I had with Mr. Swenson, I’m beginning to think I’m losing my marbles.”

  “Which is a problem,” said Ray. “Since you didn’t have that many to begin with.”

  “I don’t get the thing with Mr. Swenson at all,” said Trip, as Ray dodged the Wonderchild’s fist. “I was sure he was gonna kill us.”

  “Maybe someone fixed the machine before he saw it,” suggested Rachel.

  “Who?” asked Wendy.

  “And why?” added Roger.

  “And Hwa,” finished Ray, almost instinctively.

  “Do you really think so?” asked Trip.

  “Think what?”

  “That Dr. Hwa had the machine fixed? Or maybe just told Mr. Swenson not to say anything to us about it. He does seem bound and determined to be nice to us.”

  “Well, he owes us for dragging us to this place,” said Roger.

  “Even so, that’s carrying nice to the outer limits,” said Wendy. “The guy is okay, I suppose. But I doubt he had anything to do with this.”

  “Then who did?” demanded Rachel.

  “This is where I came in,” said Ray.

  “Well, something has got to be done,” said Roger.

  “Remov!” cried Rachel.

  “This conversation is impossible!” shouted Ray. “What are you talking about?”

  “Dr. Remov,” said Rachel. “He’s the island’s code specialist. I think he’s involved with security, too. I bet he can help us trace those messages.”

  “Do you think we can trust him?” asked Trip.

  Roger shrugged. “Can we afford not to?”

  “Well, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” asked Dr. Remov. The freckle-faced scientist was standing at the door of his house, staring at the five youngsters with some puzzlement.

  “We need to talk to you,” said Roger, who had appointed himself spokesman for the group. “It’s urgent.”