Floors #3: The Field of Wacky Inventions (10 page)

“Hang on!” Leo said. “I’m coming in!”

Leo stripped out two feet of silver duct tape and stuck it to the wall, then peeled off another two feet and dove into the antigravity room. The tape held him in one spot, where he floated as if he was in a tank full of water. He looked down for the first time and found that the wooden blocks floated all through the chamber, the bottom of which was quite a lot farther away than he was expecting.

“The bottom must be somewhere inside the floor below us, in the tiny dinosaur zoo. The antigravity must have kicked in when the two floors clicked together.”

He couldn’t shake the fact that the floor of the chamber was at least twenty feet below the place where they floated in the air. If the antigravity stopped working, they’d surely hit the bottom hard.

“This is the coolest thing ever,” Lucy said. She was smiling from ear to ear, her ponytail lolling in circles behind her head.

“I’ll have to invite you to my hotel sometime. The Whippet has a lot of stuff like this. I’ve got a roller coaster that will blow your mind. And a room that’s a giant pinball machine. You can play it!”

“Count me in!” she yelled.

Leo looked up at the ceiling. Through the storm of wooden blocks, he saw two things: a digital clock with red numbers that was counting down, and beneath the clock, nine small squares. The clock had run down to ten minutes, but Leo had no idea what it was for.

“Hey, there’s Phil! Over there!”

Phil was hugging a wooden block with all four limbs, biting into it over and over again while he did cartwheels in the air. He wasn’t too far away from Leo, so Leo stripped an arm’s length of tape and pushed off from the wall in Phil’s direction. The sticky side of the duct tape was filling with blocks as Leo reached out as far as he could and just about grabbed Phil before Lucy yelled.

“He’s pretty wound up. Better not grab him or he might bite.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Leo said, but he had long been a master of picking up lizards, spiders, and mice. He had an exceptional talent for that sort of thing. More important, he had a pair of hot-coal tongs he kept in one of the really long pockets of his overalls.

“Come to papa,” Leo whispered, taking the tongs in hand and snapping them open and shut like a long, skinny pair of pliers. Phil was preoccupied with eating the wooden block, so when he floated just close enough, Leo had no trouble gently clamping the hot-coal tongs around Phil’s waist. The tiny dinosaur was not happy. He thrashed around like a little monster caught in a trap until Lucy finally made her way back and put him in her pocket.

“Maybe give him a toy to play with,” Leo said as he put away the tongs. Lucy grabbed the first wooden block to come by and dangled it next to Phil’s head. He held the block with his small front claws and tried to eat it.

“Dinosaurs aren’t that smart, huh?” Leo asked.

“Yeah, I’m thinking maybe that’s why they’re extinct,” Lucy replied.

“I have a feeling I know how this puzzle works,” Leo said as Lucy started to float away. He reached out his hand and she took it. There was a little zap of electricity in the air and the current ran between them, making them both laugh nervously.

“Sorry about that,” Leo said.

Lucy smiled awkwardly, but kept holding his hand as they hovered in the room together. “So. The puzzle?”

“Oh, right, that,” Leo stammered. “Well, I think the letters we have spell something. I’ve been thinking about my letters — two sets of
O
,
Y
, and
U
— that’s gotta be two
you
s. And your letters —
M
,
E
,
R
,
T
,
H
,
O
, and an extra
E
. I think that spells
the more
. And you have that
2x
block, a multiplier.”

“You think a lot,” Lucy said.

“I know. It’s a habit.”

A bell seemed to go off in Lucy’s head. “So we have two sets of
the more you
!”

“That we do.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I’m guessing the others had letter blocks on their journey, too.”

Leo pointed toward the far wall, where two more openings filled with cloudy white fog swirled and moved. They both took in the four walls of the room and found a total of six such doors, one for each person in the maze.

“Hey!” Remi’s voice filled the antigravity chamber, and Lucy, surprised by the noise, let go of Leo’s hand. She floated out into the middle of the room, and Leo realized that she had mastered moving where she pleased. She swam toward Remi as Leo stayed stuck where he was.

“Hi, Remi — glad you could make it,” Lucy said as she swam through the air. She turned her feet toward Remi and executed a ninja kick. But Remi’s attention had drifted elsewhere. He was looking at the floor of the chamber, which was a long way down.

“You don’t have to come inside,” Leo said. He knew Remi was not the kind of person who sought out adventure unless it contained things like seat belts, donuts, and pizza.

“Oh yes, you do!” Lucy said. She had arrived at the door where Remi’s head was. Putting her hand through the fog, she grabbed his red doorman’s jacket and pulled him in.

“Whadja do that for?” Remi said. He was turning somersaults like an Olympic gymnast, tumbling across the room toward Leo.

“Whoa there, fella!” Leo called out. “Whoa!”

But there was no stopping Remi, who plowed through countless toy blocks and smashed into Leo. The two of them tangled and ended up back-to-back, stuck to each other with all the tape Leo had rolled into the chamber.

“You had to bring the duct tape, didn’t you?” Remi said.

“Cool place, right?” Leo said, trying to wrench himself free without success as Lucy laughed.

“What on earth are you idiots doing in there?”

Miss Sheezley had arrived at her door, where her pencil-thin eyebrows were raised so high she looked like the bride of Frankenstein.

“Well, this
is
a surprise,” Alfred Whitney said from the other side of the room, where he, too, had finally landed.

“Everyone just stay where you are,” Leo said. “I’ve got this thing figured out … I think. I just need a second here.”

He was turned upside down when he took out the box-cutting knife and began to slice away the duct tape. By the time he was free of his brother, Remi had grown used to the antigravity chamber and was laughing like a lunatic.

To everyone’s surprise, Alfred Whitney jumped right in and let Comet free inside the antigravity chamber. There was never a happier duckling, for he found that his barely formed wings could carry him like a real grown-up duck. His mother would have been proud as he dodged and parried around wooden blocks, zooming through the air on moth-size wings, having the time of his little life.

“Everyone listen,” Leo said, righting himself against one of the walls. “Did you find any wooden blocks in your sections of the maze?”

“I did!” Remi said. “They were green. I’ve got them here in my pocket with Blop.”

Remi dug into his pocket and accidentally let Blop out into the open, where the small, talkative robot opened his eyes and realized where he was.

“Fascinating,” he said, floating wildly in the air as wooden blocks bounced off him from every side. But that didn’t stop him from speculating about the room. “Mr. Whippet worked up these plans ages ago, but I never thought he’d actually pull it together. Who gave him a Wyro?”

“We did!” Remi said joyfully. “Remember? We got it from Dr. Flart!”

“He must have fired the Wyro in the field of wacky inventions,” Blop said. “The thing about a Wyro is it’ll only last a little while. An hour at most.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Remi asked.

“It means this chamber isn’t going to stay antigravity for much longer!” Leo yelled. “That must be what the clock is for.”

“Uh-oh,” Alfred said, looking up at the ceiling and seeing the clock that Leo was referring to. “If that’s true, we only have six more minutes.”

“Idiots,” Miss Sheezley added. They could see only her head, which looked like it was detached from the rest of her body.

“Remi, what letters did you get?” Leo asked frantically.

“Let’s see …
K
,
E
,
A
, and
T
.”

“Everyone, what’s that spell if we unscramble it? Lucy and I got two sets of
the more you
with our letters.”

“TAKE!”
Alfred yelled. “It spells
take
!”

“Excellent!” Leo said. “And what about you, Alfred? What letters did you get?”

“Mine were purple. There were five, and I already know what they spell out:
leave
.”

“Fantastic!” Leo said. “That only leaves Miss Sheezley. Where is she?”

“I’m over here, where it’s safe,” she said. “And you’ve got five minutes.”

“I bet I know what letters she has,” Lucy said. She seemed to be searching through the floating letters, trying to find certain ones. “She has
B
,
E
,
H
,
I
,
N
,
D
.”

“Why, she’s right,” Miss Sheezley said. “Clever girl.”

“Looks like Leo’s not the only puzzle solver in the bunch,” Remi said. He was curled up in a cannonball, torpedoing through blocks.

“What are you looking for?” Leo asked Lucy.

“The answer to the riddle,” she said.

“And what is the riddle?” As Alfred asked this, Comet flew right up in front of his face, showing off
how talented he was, and Alfred carefully took hold of him in both hands, placing the duckling safely back inside his pocket.

“Leo and I each had two sets of the same thing —
the more you
— and the rest of you had a total of three words —
take
,
leave
, and
behind
.”

“So the riddle is this,” Leo finished what she was saying. “The more you take, the more you leave behind.”

“And the answer is
footsteps
,” Lucy said with delight. “So I’m looking for those letters. I found an
F
and an
S
so far.”

Alfred piped in next. “I have an
O
!”

“Me too!” Remi shouted. “And a
T
!”

“I have just now grabbed another
T
out of the air,” Miss Sheezley said. She was leaning out into the antigravity chamber, but she had not gone so far as to jump in. “It’s the least I could do.”

“We’re down to three minutes,” Leo said. “There are nine slots for the answer up by the clock. Everyone! To the top as fast as you can! And keep searching for another
S
, an
E
, and a
P
.”

Everyone started swimming for the top. They’d all gotten used to how antigravity felt and moved with ease among the blocks. Remi swam by Blop and picked him up as he kept talking about the Wyro and gravity and how it was about to come to a stop.

“WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!” Remi screamed, looking down at the floor of the antigravity chamber, far below.

“Remi, calm down,” Leo said. “There’s time to finish the puzzle and get to the bottom before this thing shuts down. Come on! We need your letters!”

Lucy swam by Miss Sheezley and grabbed the letters from her hands, then arrived at the ceiling before everyone else. She placed her letters into the correct slots, where they stuck like magnets, and turned to her friends.

“Hurry! We’ve only got one minute left!”

Leo arrived next and put his letters in, then Alfred inserted his. The only letters they needed were an
O
and a
T
, and no matter how hard they searched, no one could find either. Only Remi had those letters, and he was headed for the floor, too afraid to fall and possibly break his arm, his neck, or his butt.

“I got this,” Leo said. He bunched up like a ball against the ceiling and pushed off with his legs as hard as he could. It was like diving into a meteor storm in space, wooden blocks pelting him from all sides as he sliced through the room and crashed into Remi near the bottom.

“Not cool!” Remi cried out as he bounced off the floor.

“Give me the blocks, Remi! There’s no time!”

Remi handed Leo the
O
and the
T
and watched as Leo blasted off the floor like a missile heading into outer space.

“Dang,” Remi said. “My brother is awesome.”

The clock ticked down to ten seconds as Leo flew.

“Get to the bottom! Fast!” he yelled.

Alfred and Lucy used the same technique Leo had used to push off the ceiling and dive for the floor. Just as Lucy was flying past the one opening no one had come out of, Mr. Pilf stepped through the door into the antigravity chamber.

“Oh my, this is bad,” he said, turning every which way as he tried to understand what was happening to him. Alfred slammed right into Mr. Pilf and the two of them tumbled end over end toward the bottom, completely out of control.

At the ceiling, the clock wound down to three seconds as Leo inserted the last two letters and felt them stick to the ceiling like glue. The clock ticked down to one and then zero and then the sound of a giant energy source coming to its end was heard echoing through the antigravity chamber. Leo could feel himself start to take on weight again, but he was a very smart boy in possession of a long pair of hot-coal tongs. He gripped the tongs on a wooden block, which had a nice
groove at the bottom of the letter
T
, and held on for dear life.

Remi dropped to the floor first, for he was only a foot off the ground. Lucy drifted down like a balloon running out of air as the gravity returned, landing perfectly on her feet. Mr. Pilf and Alfred were in the throes of a twisting, diving, tangled mess, from which Mr. Pilf emerged the big loser. It was he who hit the floor first, followed by Alfred, who found himself sitting on poor Mr. Pilf’s rib cage.

Everyone looked up, searching for Leo Fillmore and, instead, found thousands of letter blocks falling from the sky. They rained down until Remi and Lucy found themselves hip-deep in wooden blocks and Mr. Pilf was covered entirely.