Operation Sherlock (16 page)

Hap moaned again. Trip dropped to his knees and began to shake his companion by the shoulder.

“Huh? Whazzat? Whaddaya wan?” Hap muttered.

“Wake up!” screamed Trip, shaking him even harder. “We're in trouble!”

Another spray of water came over the edge of the cube. When it splashed onto Hap's face, his eyes blinked open.

“Where are we?”

When Trip told him, a look of horrified understanding twisted his face. He lurched to his feet, but fell back. “Help me up,” he demanded. “Help me up. We've got to get out of here!”

But once on his feet, he had to admit what he had already known in his heart. The cube was escape-proof.

“There's got to be a way out of this!” raged Trip. He began to run around the bottom of the cube, pounding against the walls as if that would somehow release them.

“Stop that!” shouted Hap. He looked around. “Where's Ray?”

Trip collapsed against one of the Plexiglas walls and slid to the floor. A few drops of water spattered onto his head. “I don't know,” he whispered. “Maybe he got away. Maybe he's dead. It won't be long before we are.” He shook his head. “It's too bad you didn't bring one of those wrist things you and Wendy were working on.”

“But I did!”

“Well, get busy and get us some help!”

“I don't know if this will do any good,” said Hap, fiddling with the controls. “You know how well these things
don't
work.”

“Do you have a better idea?” snapped Trip. More water splashed into the cube.

“Just don't want to get your hopes up,” said Hap. He began to speak into the small device. “Help! We're at the power plant.”

He waited, but there was no answer.

He tapped the transmitter and tried again. “Help! We're at the power plant. Help! Power plant!”

The edge of another wave washed over the grille. There was more water this time, almost a quart. It wasn't much, but they knew it was only the beginning. The tide was moving in, and each wave would come a little farther over the edge of the box, throw in a little more water than the one before it.

It wouldn't be long before the box filled and began to sink into the deep, dark shaft.

“Help!” cried Hap desperately. He shook the little transmitter. “Help us. We're at the power plant!”

Wendy was just drifting off to sleep when the miniature communicator resting on her nightstand crackled into life.

“Huh?” she said, struggling to her elbows. “What's going on?”

“Help!” cried a distant voice. “Help our aunt!”

Wendy flopped her head back onto the pillow. What a stupid game. Somebody was going to hear about this tomorrow.

“Help!” cried the voice again.

“Shut up!” yelled Wendy, pushing her face into the mattress and covering her head with her pillow.

“Help our aunt!” cried the voice. “Help. Our aunt!”

But Wendy could no longer hear the desperate plea.

Her snores were drowning it out.

Hap cried out in horror as a splash of salty water from above struck the little transmitter. With the tiniest hint of a sizzle all its lights went out.

He cursed and shook the thing. It made no difference. The transmitter was dead.

And the tide was getting higher.

 

Descent into Doom

Wendy sat bolt upright in bed.

How long had she been sleeping?

She looked at her clock. Only minutes! What had woken her?

It was the words—the words pounding in her brain. She clutched her head, trying to force them out. But she kept hearing them over and over:
“Help. Our aunt.”

Where did they come from? Why wouldn't they stop swirling around in her head?

Then she remembered. She had been drifting off to sleep, and Hap had called her.

She growled. He was going to pay for that come morning. She'd teach him to fool around with something that was meant to be a tool, not a toy.

What if he wasn't fooling around?

The thought leaped unbidden into her head and sent a shiver trembling down her spine.

Help. Our aunt
.

What could it possibly mean?

She thought about the garbled messages they had dealt with earlier that day. The problem then had been parts of the words getting dropped off.

Help
. That was simple enough. Nothing missing there.

Our aunt
. What could that mean?

She threw aside the sheets. Grabbing her robe, she headed for the phone.
I hope one of the twins answers
, she thought.
I don't know how I would explain this to their father
.

Rachel Phillips was putting the finishing touches on the article she had been typing for her father when the phone ringing beside her startled her into deleting a word.

She frowned. Who could be calling at this time of night?

“Telephone!” yelled Paracelsus. “I'd get it, but you forgot to give me legs.”

Wishing her twin had a somewhat less bizarre sense of humor, Rachel reached for the receiver.

“Help. Our aunt,” said the voice at the other end.

“What? Who is this?”

“It's me, Wendy. Listen, help me figure out what that might mean. I think the boys are in trouble.”

Rachel felt a coldness grip her heart. “What are you talking about?”

Quickly Wendy explained about the message that had come in over the wrist device.

“Do you have a lexigraphic program you can plug into your terminal?” asked Rachel.

“Great Glork! Why didn't I think of that? That's what happens when someone wakes me out of a sound sleep. Listen, you start running it, too, will you? I'm worried.”

“Will do,” said Rachel. “I'll call you if I figure anything out. You do the same.”

“Right,” said the Wonderchild. Then she clicked off.

Rachel reached for the lex program and found she was trembling. What could the strange words mean? Were the boys really in trouble? She was glad Roger had come home with her and was upstairs now, doing some of the other chores they had promised their father to complete.

She plugged the program into the terminal. More than likely the mainframe had a similar one, probably more powerful, but she had no time to search for it.

Almost instantly the screen flashed and the program title appeared:

SAY THE WORD: A Lexigraphic Compendium.

Seconds later the words were replaced with a colorful menu of tasks the program would perform.

Rachel selected the one she wanted, an operation that would take part of a word and splice on beginnings and endings, then present her with the combinations that actually matched the program's massive dictionary.

… our aunt… she typed in. The computer would insert beginnings on the first word, endings on the second. If she didn't find an answer that way, she would turn it around and try the reverse.

She waited for the computer to race its way through the dictionary.

Hit any key for listings
said the screen.

Rachel complied, and the possibilities began to scroll past her eager eyes: FOUR AUNTS, HOUR AUNTS, SOUR AUNTS…

She made an angry sound. Nothing of any sense at all. Feeling desperate, she typed in a new combination.

The water was up to Trip's knees and rising faster than ever. He stood braced against the wall. Hap was standing on his shoulders, pushing against the grille.

“It's no use,” he grunted. “I can't move it!”

“Try again!” shouted Trip. His shoulders were screaming for relief, but the fear of death gave him a strength he had never known he possessed. “Hit it harder!”

“I'm hitting it as hard as I can!” bellowed Hap. He smashed the palms of his hands against the grille again, but it didn't budge, not even a millimeter.

“Again!” yelled Trip, just before his knees buckled and he dropped backward. A great splash went up as Hap fell from Trip's shoulders and struck the water.

They felt the cube lurch another inch downward.

The two boys huddled together miserably and looked up. The water wasn't splashing in now. It was
pouring
over the edge of their prison in a steady stream.

“How long do you figure we have?” whispered Hap.

Trip shook his head. “I don't know. It just keeps coming faster and faster…”

“Whatcha doin'?” asked Roger, wandering in to the room where Rachel was working.

“Trying to match words,” said Rachel. Her voice was trembling. “I'm glad you're here.”

Roger looked at his sister more closely and realized that her face was pale, her eyes wide with worry.

“What's going on?”

When Rachel had filled him in, he looked over her shoulder at the monitor, our…/… aunt were the cues she was typing in.

“Look, Rachel—I don't want to tell you what to do. But are those the kind of cues you've been typing in since you started?”

“Why?”

“Well, this program isn't all that sophisticated. All you're going to get with
aunt
are words that end with
a-u-n-t
—of which there aren't many. It doesn't do sounds. That's up to you.”

“So?” Her face went white. “Oh, my God! I can't believe how much time I've wasted. What's the matter with my brain? Their message probably didn't have anything to do with anyone's
aunt
. That's just how I
heard
it from Wendy!”

Quickly she typed in a new clue.

The machine rolled up another list of possibilities: DOUR PANT, HOUR PANT, POUR PANT…

“You know, even now, you've got to try different readings for those things,” said Roger. “That's what made it so hard to get a computer that could read aloud—the language is just so inconsistent. You never know what a set of letters is going to mean, or how—”

“Shut up and think!” snapped Rachel.

The list continued to fill the screen, now using two letter prefixes for the second word: DOUR CHANT, DOUR GRANT…

“I can't wait until we get to elephant,” said Roger.

“Wait a minute!” cried Rachel. “Maybe I should be messing with
our
. How many ways can you spell that sound?”

Roger thought for a second. “There's
a-u-r,”
he said, beginning to tick them off on his fingers. “And
a-u-e-r. O-u-r
, of course, but you've already used that.
O-w-e-r
, if you want to stretch the point—”

“That's it!” shrieked Rachel, before she even typed it into the computer.
“P-o-w-e-r
. Power! They're at the power plant!”

She grabbed the phone. “Where's Dad?” she asked as she punched in Wendy's number.

“Either he's still at the lab or he snuck off with some of the others for an all-night poker game.”

“What's the fastest way for us to get to the power plant? Wait a minute—Wendy? This is Rachel. They're at the power plant. Meet us there!”

She hung up.

“It's not more than half a mile,” said Roger. “Our best bet is probably just to run.”

His twin nodded. “Then let's get going!”

“I'm scared,” said Trip.

“You'd be a fool if you weren't,” replied Hap. They were standing side by side against the west wall of the cube, watching the water pour over the side. It had reached their waists and was rising fast.

Trip had a picture in his mind that he kept trying to push out. But it wouldn't go. No matter how hard he tried, all he could think of was the cube he had seen the night Dr. Standish had showed him and Ray the plant—the cube sitting at the bottom of a fifty-foot shaft.

Except there was one difference. That cube had held nothing but water. The cube his mind kept showing him also held two dead bodies.

He smashed his head back against the wall, trying to drive out the vision.

The cube lurched downward again.

Trip knew that before long, when the weight was great enough, their journey down the shaft would begin in earnest. There would be no fits and starts then. Just a slow, steady descent into the earth, with the ocean pouring through the grille above them.

In some ways the slowness was the worst thing of all. Being hit by a truck—one sudden blinding burst of pain, and then nothing—began to seem merciful in comparison. This waiting, this slow ride to oblivion while his mind and body were free to act but helpless to do anything was driving him crazy.

Hap nudged him. “You ever think about dying before?”

“Not much. I was planning to put it off for a while.”

“I think your plans got messed up, buddy. Now, me, I figured—”

Hap never did tell Trip what he figured. He cut off his words as the cube moved again—and kept moving.

The boys locked eyes. The weight had reached the critical stage. The cube was beginning its descent.

Roger and Rachel had just reached the fence that guarded the power plant when Wendy came roaring up in her parents' Volkswagen.

“Wendy!” cried Rachel. “What have you done?”

“What are you worried about?” asked the Wonderchild. “This is an emergency, isn't it?”

“I hope not,” said Rachel. “I'd be much happier if it was a false alarm.”

“Well, don't count on it,” said Wendy. “None of them have made it home yet. I called the Swensons, but Hap's mom isn't too worried—she said he likes to sit on the beach at night. There was no sense in calling the others—Mrs. Swenson told me Trip and Ray were supposed to be spending the night with Hap. She thinks they're all just out stargazing.”

“They may be,” said Roger.

“So much the better,” said Wendy. “Then I can have the pleasure of killing them myself for disturbing my sleep. But if you had heard that message, I don't think you'd believe that. It was a little too desperate to be a fake. Open the gate, will you?”

Roger swung it open just wide enough to let the Volkswagen pass through. He and Rachel climbed into the car. A moment later it was jouncing down the bumpy road leading to the power plant.