“Well, I think you’re crotting marvelous. If I’m ever elected head of the UN, I’ll issue you a Hero Medal.”
“You said a curse word,” she said.
“It’s okay when I do it. Did you really hear Dr. Rivas and his son and daughter talk about the room at the bottom of the solar telescope?”
“They said it had a big secret inside and they wanted the Bug to open it, but he couldn’t. Dr. Rivas thought I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Big people ignore little kids, and they shouldn’t.”
“I’d never ignore you, chiquita. You’re too dangerous,” said the jefe. “So Dr. Angel and Dr. Marcos escaped.”
“I think so,” the little girl said. “They didn’t get any loot, though. I made that part up. I’m hungry.”
They found rusty cans of food in the pantry, which Cienfuegos said were too old to be safe. The loaves of bread crumbled into dust when Listen touched them.
“It’s like an Egyptian tomb with all the things the owner needed for the afterlife,” said Matt, thinking of El Patrón and also of Mirasol. The flowers that had been heaped around her must have withered by now. Or perhaps they didn’t in the world of the dead. Perhaps they still bloomed, and she was dancing with the people she had loved. He had left the music box in her tomb.
“There are clothes in the closet and a toothbrush on the sink, except that the bristles have fallen out,” said Matt. “All we need is a sarcophagus with a pharaoh painted on the lid.” And servants, he thought. Real pharaohs needed servants to get through the afterlife.
“There’s a lunchroom at the observatory,” Listen said. “You can get hot chocolate and donuts and sometimes turkey burritos. We should go there now.”
“Patience,” said Cienfuegos, leaning back in a chair and half-closing his eyes. “Your ancestors didn’t whine about turkey burritos when they were on a hunt. They waited like lions for the game to get careless.”
“So we’re lions,” the little girl said, interested.
“Oh, yes. We’re hunting the biggest game of all.”
“The Scorpion Star,” said Matt.
The jefe smiled gently at the dark ceiling draped with ancient cobwebs and dust. “The Mushroom Master thinks the eejits’ brains are controlled by an energy source on the Scorpion Star. And that the observatory controls the Star. We’ll begin our hunt by looking into that room at the bottom of the solar telescope.”
Matt didn’t like the plan, but he couldn’t think of a better one. He helped Listen search through the desk while they waited. Dried-up fountain pens of a sort only seen in museums filled one drawer. In another were colored scraps of paper that Cienfuegos said were used for sending letters, a concept he had to explain. These were in an envelope labeled FOREVER STAMPS.
The little girl unfolded a large diagram on the floor. The folds cracked, and each section separated from the others.
“That looks familiar.” Cienfuegos got up and weighted the pages with stones to be sure they didn’t get mixed up. “It looks a lot like the biosphere. There’s Northern Europe and Africa. And at the far end is Tundra. It’s even got the name printed on it.”
Matt knelt by it. “It could also be the space station.” The longer they studied it, the more likely this seemed. The diagram was covered with strange symbols and mathematical formulas. Between each ecosystem was a series of zigzag lines and notes like gauss here and outgauss there. In the margin was written 500 teslas. Excessive? No! At the bottom were two words: Couple on the left, and Uncouple on the right.
Cienfuegos carefully gathered up the sheets, keeping them in order. “This is gibberish to me. I’ll take it to the Mushroom Master later. It’s strange. He knows more about science than we do, and he’s a hundred years in the past. He says we depend too much on machines. All we know how to do is press buttons, but he knows how the buttons work.”
50
THE SECRET ROOM
When the sun slipped behind the Chiricahua Mountains, they left the abandoned observatory. Heat still radiated from the ground, and a wind had whipped up a dust storm. It blew into their eyes and dried their lips, but it also made them less easy to spot on the treeless road.
The white dome of El Patrón’s observatory loomed against the shadow of night rising in the east. To the south appeared the Scorpion Star, always the first to be seen at evening and the last to disappear at dawn. They slipped into a side door and tiptoed along the dark, curved wall to the door of the lunchroom. No one noticed them. The technicians were busy with screens and computers.
The room was deserted, and they helped themselves to hot chocolate and donuts. Only the greasy wrappers that had been around the turkey burritos were left. “We’re taking a huge chance, but I think Listen is right. We need a pick-me-up before tackling the solar telescope,” said Cienfuegos. Matt found a machine that served boxes of apple juice, and he pocketed a few of these before they went to the other building.
He dreaded the giant shaft plunging beneath the solar telescope in a way that wasn’t quite rational. After all, they had survived it before. Yet something about the enclosed space, the hot air gusting up, the darkness and awareness of tons of earth over his head made him break out in a sweat before they even got to the elevator.
“I wish we could leave Listen up here,” Matt whispered when they had reached the shaft door.
“She’s safer with us,” said Cienfuegos.
“Don’t worry, Listen. We did it before and we can do it again,” said Matt, more to reassure himself than her. He held on to the elevator door, wishing he could back out.
“I’m not scared of heights,” the little girl said.
“You can’t be sure of that. You’ve never seen a drop like this.”
“She’ll be fine,” said the jefe, pulling the door closed. And then they were sinking at a forty-five-degree angle. Round and round they spiraled the huge tube of the telescope. Dim lights gleamed on its dark-green surface. “It’s hot down here,” said Listen, pulling her blouse loose. She was already drenched in sweat.
Air conditioners whirred at various levels, and a warm breeze rose out of the depths. They passed another elevator slowly rising and saw the sickly faces of the eejits moving up.
The heat was unbearable, even at night. Soon they were all panting, and Matt opened one of the apple juice boxes and handed it to Listen. They passed a platform in an alcove and saw eejits mending a pipe with an oxyacetylene torch. Sparks showered into the elevator cage. More heat.
The elevator bumped at the bottom. They moved quickly, but before they got to the door, they heard the sizzle of more sparks. Cienfuegos signaled for them to stop. Matt saw an eejit trying to cut through the wall to the forbidden room.
Listen grabbed Matt’s arm. “I can see Dr. Angel and Dr. Marcos,” she whispered.
Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a lightning bolt snaked out of the wall and incinerated the eejit. The odor of burnt flesh drifted through the hall. “Next!” shouted a voice Matt recognized. Another eejit took up the torch. There was a line of them waiting in the space between the telescope and the wall.