Jack and the Geniuses

by Bill Nye

  We were flying.

  14

  A DESERT OF ICE AND SNOW

  Human flight is an amazing accomplishment when planned. The Wright Brothers, for example. The Apollo missions. Michael Jordan. But the Snowgoer was not meant to fly. Hank’s vehicle was designed to travel along the surface, and as the front leaned down and to the left, I realized we were heading there quickly.

  The plastic windshield struck the ice first.

  The inflatable walls bent, absorbing the impact. The harness pressed harder into my stuffy coat as we flipped over.

  The vehicle bumped and rolled. My brain somersaulted. My stomach did some kind of backflip. Clumps of snow were flying around inside the vehicle. But the harness held tight, and my Big-Red-wrapped body remained in my seat.

  Somehow we landed upright. I spat some snow off my lip.

  “Everyone okay?” Hank asked. There was a rare note of panic in his voice. “Anything broken?”

  “Besides the Snowgoer? No.”

  Hank exhaled, massively relieved. Then he let out a few strange, excited, nonsensical whoops. “Wow! Right?” He moved his jaw as if to check whether it was still working. “There’s inertia for you. I mean, I know an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force”—he patted the Snowgoer’s inflatable sides—“but that’s the first time I’ve actually been the object in motion.”

  Matt laughed; I didn’t get the joke.

  “Why’s it so quiet?” Ava asked. “Did the motor shut down?”

  Something clanked shut at the front of the vehicle. “That’s the intake valve,” Hank said. Then, for me, he added, “You know, the mouth. It’s a crash safety feature. The vehicle shuts itself down and closes up.”

  “So let’s start her up again,” Ava said.

  “We can’t,” Hank said. He pulled off his left glove and shoved up his sleeve to check his enormous watch. “Another safety feature. The computer does a full systems check after a crash. It shouldn’t take too long. Then we can start on our way again. A little slower this time.”

  The noise outside intensified. Snow and wind were slamming against the windows. Then we heard a faint crunching sound below us, too. Even through the thick soles of my boots and the rigid bottom of the sled, I could feel movement. And while I could hardly see outside, I caught enough of a glimpse through the swirls of white to notice a new problem. “Are we moving again?”

  Hank laughed. “No, we’re not moving, Jack. I just told you, the motor is off.”

  Ava gripped her seat. “No,” she said, “we’re definitely moving.”

  “We are not moving,” Hank insisted.

  Ava reached over and wiped the windshield with the side of her glove.

  Hank’s head popped forward. He looked as though he’d just seen an alien ship drop down to the ice. “Hey,” he shouted, “why are we moving?!” He pulled off his other glove and drummed his fingers on his chin. “We’re too light,” he said. “The wind out here is too strong. And with the intake valve closed, the bottom of the craft is perfectly smooth. Our walls are catching the wind like sails.” He leaned back in his seat, smiling wide. “Fascinating! I hardly expected this!”

  The whole phenomenon was so terribly interesting to him that he didn’t even stop to consider that there were people inside this accidental sailboat, and that he was one of them, and that, for a few minutes at least, until we could turn the motor back on, we had no way to steer. I cleared my window and looked up and out at the mountains in the distance. The Transantarctic range was to our left. We were drifting north along the invisible shore. From my pocket I removed a small compass. The needle wavered, then held in place. Our heading was just right. I grinned.

  Next to me, Matt was gripping his harness, as if that would protect him. “Why are you so happy?” he asked through clenched teeth. “We’re in an out-of-control vehicle in the middle of a frozen wasteland!”

  I leaned back and tapped the face of the compass. “Yeah, but we’re going the right way.”

  We sailed onward, skimming over the ice, for at least fifteen minutes before a pair of green lights sparked to life on the control panel. Hank clapped. “Good, we can start her up again.”

  Again I looked out at the mountains and the passing snow formations. We were going at least as fast with the wind as we had with the motor. “Or we could save the batteries and just keep sailing,” I suggested.

  The motor purred below us. Hank had already switched on the system. We heard another click, and without any warning, the front of the vehicle caught in the snow and held fast. The entire Snowgoer flipped, back over front, and landed on the inflatable roof. It took me a moment to realize I was hanging upside down. We all were. And all four of us had the bright idea to unbuckle at the exact same time. We tumbled into a human pile with yours truly at the bottom. Something heavy and hard pressed down on me. I couldn’t breathe. The ice-encrusted sole of a boot was digging into my cheek. I tried to shout, but someone’s elbow was stuffed into my mouth. Then we shifted. The human pile collapsed to the sides. I could breathe again and hear enough to notice a slight but powerful pop. Ava was shouting at Matt to get off her. Hank was apologizing. I elbowed my way up into a sitting position. The seats were above us. Yet they seemed to be getting closer. The wind was still blowing, so it was hard to notice the sound, but in all the arguing and shuffling around in the small space I heard a very real hiss. The kind of sound you hear when the air’s leaking out of a beach ball.

  I pointed to the collapsing roof. “That’s not good, huh?”

  “Out,” Hank said. “Everybody out!”

  We scrambled through the back of the Snowgoer, then stood and watched as the hardened sled collapsed on top of the deflating shell.

  “What now?” Ava asked.

  No one had an answer. Not Matt, not Hank. And definitely not me. Our only method of transportation lay in a depressing heap. The base was a twenty-mile walk back through the snow. An explorer named Tom Crean had nearly died attempting a similar trek. And he was legendarily tough.

  If I was right, Anna was hiding out in the opposite direction, thirty miles away. So we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. We had to either return or press on. And with the Herbie on its way, we might not survive either trip.

  The landscape in front of us was a bright and terrifying desert of ice and snow. The mountains loomed to our left like angry sleeping giants. And between us and the comforts of McMurdo Station stood the same bright white cold. The wind scraped my face. We could make it part of the way back, then build a shelter to sleep the night and complete the trip in the morning.

  That would be the only sane choice.

  But we’d be leaving Anna behind. We’d be giving up. And I don’t like giving up.

  “We have to turn back,” Hank said.

  I protested. “But we can’t just—”

  “I can run,” Matt said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m wearing the legs,” Matt said.

  Hank, Ava, and I all said, “What?”

  “The robotic legs,” he said. He knocked his gloved fist against the side of his baggy snow pants. The sound was solid. And now it made sense why he had been walking strangely. He kicked some snow at his feet. “With these I could probably run back in no time and get help.”

  “Wait,” Ava said, “back up. Why, exactly, are you wearing the robolegs?”

  Matt struggled to answer. He wouldn’t look at Hank. “When we were testing the Snowgoer, I was in the Mechanical Equipment Center, and Hank had run off to get something, and the robolegs were there, and so I kind of tried them on to see how they worked, and then you came back, Hank, and I didn’t want to tell you, because you kept saying to be patient, and, well, I just haven’t had a chance to take them off.” Slowly he looked up at his idol.

  Hank’s face was expressionless for a moment. Then he pointed to Matt’s legs. “You’ve had them on all this time?”

  “What?”


  “You’ve been wearing them through all this chaos, and they’re still functioning normally, even in these temperatures?”

  Again Matt paused; he clearly didn’t know what to say. “Y-y-yes. Yes, definitely! They’re working fine.” He jogged a short distance through the snow, then circled back. “They do all the work for you. And, honestly, I’m sorry I—”

  “Don’t worry,” Hank said. “Really. Even if this isn’t quite the sort of experiment I had in mind, I did bring them down here for a reason.”

  “So you’re not disappointed in me?” Matt asked, his voice so low I could barely hear him.

  “Disappointed? In you? That’s absurd, Matthew. I’ve never been disappointed in you. You impress me daily.”

  Honestly, I think my brother may have floated above the snow for a second on the power of that compliment.

  “I’m serious. I’ll run back to the base,” Matt said. “I could get there in—”

  “No,” Hank insisted. “I admire your courage, but I’m responsible for your safety, and I can’t let . . .”

  “You can’t what?” Ava prompted him when he abruptly stopped speaking.

  But Hank was looking past us, toward the base. Turning, we saw it, too. A form appeared on the horizon.

  “Is that a snowmobile?” Ava asked.

  “I think it might be . . .”

  “You said you’d take the blame, right, Hank?” Matt asked.

  “What? Me?” Hank asked. “Yes, yes. I did say that, didn’t I? I will.”

  Moments later a snowmobile skidded to a stop some ten feet from our crumpled craft. The driver stepped off, pulled down his hood, pushed his orange-lensed goggles up on his forehead, and smiled. In a familiar Australian accent he asked, “What are you four doing all the way out here?”

  15

  THE CALL OF THE SEALS

  After we finished cheering, clapping, and thanking him repeatedly, Danno squeezed Hank’s shoulder. “I need to take care of the Clutterbuck judge!” he said. “Just don’t forget me when you’re picking the winner tomorrow.”

  Matt pointed back at the ice ridge. “How did you—”

  Danno’s mouth formed a small o as he breathed in slowly, then smiled with pride. “I jumped her! I happened to see you leaving the base, so I sped after you. I’d nearly caught up to you when you jumped the ramp. I figured if you four could do it in your little bubble mobile, I ought to be able to. For a split second there I did wonder if it was a bad idea, but she landed just fine.”

  “It’s called the Snowgoer,” Hank said.

  “Excuse me?” Danno asked.

  “It’s not a bubble mobile.”

  “Oh, right. My apologies, mate,” Danno said. “Either way, she sure did take off with the wind. I thought I’d lost you there!”

  He clapped Hank on the back, then eyed our deflated vehicle. After a quick discussion, Danno suggested we flip it over onto the shell and tow it like a sled. One of us could sit on the back of the snowmobile with him, the other three on the Snowgoer. Hank agreed, and we started working. Matt folded and tied down the deflated walls. Hank helped Danno secure the crumpled craft to the back of the snowmobile with a pair of strong climbing ropes. Ava worked on the knots, and Matt and I gathered our emergency packs.

  The cold was fierce. I stomped my feet in the snow to keep them warm, then closed my eyes and tried to dream of Tahiti, with the hot sand under my back and the sun cooking my chest.

  Matt kicked a spray of snow into my face. “Are you helping or not?”

  Danno and Hank grabbed the front of the Snowgoer and dragged it around to point in the other direction.

  “Shouldn’t we be going that way?” I asked, pointing toward our destination.

  “No, mate, the base is behind us,” Danno said.

  “We can’t go back to the base. We still have to find Anna,” I insisted.

  “That’s lunacy, boy. I’m taking you all home to McMurdo.”

  Now, look, I’ll be honest, the warmth and comfort of the station were totally appealing. We could’ve been back there ordering a fresh pizza. But we’d come this far, and now we had a snowmobile. Why not push on? “We have to go look for her.”

  “It’s not safe, mate,” Danno said.

  “It’s not that much farther,” Ava added. “We know where she is.”

  Now Danno stopped. “You do?”

  “Jack here figured it all out,” Hank said. And maybe it was just the wind messing with his voice, but I’d swear I heard a hint of pride in his tone.

  I looked to Ava, Matt, and Hank. “We think we know, yes.” Then I pointed to the emergency packs. “It should be about thirty miles farther. We have enough supplies and food to last for a week if anything goes wrong.”

  “We have to do it,” Ava said.

  “We might as well,” Matt added with a shrug.

  Hank tapped the hood of the snowmobile. “We owe it to Anna to try.”

  Danno was shaking his head. “No! Okay? No. That’s the answer. We’re going back to the station.”

  Our Australian friend slapped Hank on the back. “Come on now, let’s not be ridiculous. We’ve got to get you back to judge the contest, Hank.”

  The Clutterbuck Prize again. In our desperate search for Anna, I hadn’t been thinking about the main reason we were in Antarctica in the first place. But to Daniel Perkins the prize meant everything. His eyes were shining with intensity. His smile was oddly twisted. The combination of the two looked as fake as a plastic cactus. The more I stared, the more I saw behind those strange, glimmering eyes. All this time we’d been thinking that Franklin Golding or Evgeny Levokin might be behind the plot against Anna. But we were wrong. Anna’s discovery threatened Danno more than anyone. The way her creatures sucked the salt out of water was probably far more effective than his DP-1000.

  She was the roadblock on his route to a million dollars.

  And he had to knock her out of the way.

  “Jack, what’s wrong?” Ava asked.

  My stare wasn’t breaking. Danno’s cracked lips closed. His false smile faded.

  “We have to keep going,” I said.

  “No, mate, we’re all going back,” Danno said, his breath rising in thick clouds.

  “Or what? You’ll leave us out here?” I waited a second before delivering the verbal uppercut. “Just like you left Anna?”

  Hank spurted out, “Jack, what are you talking about?”

  “You’re the one who chased her out onto the ice, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Come on now—”

  “That does kind of make sense,” Matt added. He sounded completely shocked that I’d had a good idea.

  Danno said nothing.

  “There’s no use lying anymore. We know.”

  For a few long seconds no one spoke. The wind whipped around us. The storm was growing stronger by the minute, and Danno’s face was as frozen as the ice beneath our boots. Then a half smile broke its way through his expressionless features. “Nobody chased her out here. She ran on her own.”

  “Because someone was wrecking her work,” I said. “You stole her computer and her sample of the creatures.”

  “Listen—”

  Ava jabbed a gloved finger into the air. “The honey!”

  “What?” Hank asked.

  “Huh?” I added.

  “The sticky stuff on the counters and shelves in Anna’s room,” she said. “That was you, too, right? You were licking that stuff off your fingers the first time we met.”

  Hank winced. “That was repugnant.”

  “Really,” Danno said, “this is ridiculous. Let’s get back to the base, please.”

  Ava pointed to her pack on the edge of the sled. “I’ll bet my little flying robot has some video of you going into Anna’s room,” she said. “He’s been watching everyone.”

  She was bluffing; Ava hadn’t even flown Fred indoors. I glanced at her pack; the drone was strapped to the outside. No one moved. The wind itself seemed to be waitin
g to see what Danno would do. And then he leaped across the snow, lunging for the drone. He ripped it loose, then slipped, and Fred rolled into the snow.

  Danno reached down to grab it, but the drone’s blades began to spin. Ava was fumbling with the old smartphone in her pocket.

  Fred lifted off in a small blizzard of snow. “Stop that thing!” Danno yelled. He jumped for the robot, but it was out of reach. “Get it down here!” he yelled to Ava.

  “I can’t,” she lied. “I think it’s broken.”

  She was lying again.

  Danno desperately hurled an ice ball at Fred and missed. “You all should’ve just left this whole mess alone,” he barked.

  “Why?” Hank asked. “Why would you steal another scientist’s work?”

  “The Clutterbuck Prize,” Ava said. “Those creatures Anna found could make his invention irrelevant.”

  “This is all because of your DS-1000?” Hank asked.

  “DP!” Danno shouted. “The DP-1000! How many times do I have to tell you that? And it is not merely an invention, Dr. Weatherspoon. You may turn out a new device every three months, but the rest of us only get one shot. One good idea! And if we don’t make the most of it, that’s all. Well, I spent the last ten winters here in this dark, cold wasteland, working on my machine, trying to figure out every possible way to get it right. Then I found it! The DP-1000 represents ten years of work. This is my chance. I finally built a better desalination system.”

  “Ten percent better,” Matt said. He shrugged at Hank. “That’s what he said, right? I mean, I’m just saying . . . it’s only ten percent.”

  “But it is better! Ten percent is huge! Don’t you see? I improved every piece of the design, and then your friend found these little creatures that could ruin everything! I didn’t want her to hide them forever. I just wanted to win the prize.”

  The wind conveniently calmed, as if the continent itself were pausing to listen. “And a million dollars,” I added.

  “Yes, yes, I wanted the money, and so I needed to get your friend Anna and her creatures out of the way. That night when she was trying to sneak off, I found her trying to steal a snowmobile. I have my own”—he nodded to his vehicle—“so I offered to drive her. I wanted to see where she’d found those things to make sure no one else could do the same. Or not for a while, at least. But on our way to the site she must have figured it out. We stopped, and she wouldn’t go any farther. I tried to reason with her. I even offered her a cut of my earnings if she would wait to reveal her discovery.”