Frank Einstein and the EvoBlaster Belt, Page 2

  “Hey!” squeaks T. Edison. “OK, slow down. Maybe it was both our idea.”

  Mr. Chimp swings the hammock fast, faster, fastest.

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!” T. Edison yells.

  Mr. Chimp pushes, flips, spins T. Edison upside down and around and around in complete circles. Pieces of banana muffin fly off the spinning hammock.

  “Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Edison yells.

  “Stop! . . .”

  “Stop! . . .”

  “Stop!”

  Mr. Chimp jerks the hammock to a quick stop. He looks T. Edison in the eye.

  “OK, it was your idea.”

  Mr. Chimp gives a soft “Hooo Hooo,” and lets the hammock go.

  T. Edison sits up in his hammock, dizzy.

  The butterfly flaps its wings and lands gently on a little side table.

  “But you know what the best part of this whole setup is?”

  “Hmmmm?” answers Mr. Chimp, sitting down and twirling his pink drink umbrella.

  “We are miles from Midville. And miles from that nosy Frank Einstein and his goober friend and junkyard robots. And there is no way they can mess up my plans this time.”

  “Hmmm,” says Mr. Chimp, finishing his Banana ’n’ Ants.

  “Exactly,” says T. Edison.

  Mr. Chimp’s phone buzzes.

  He checks it and sees his green Security Alert sign.

  Mr. Chimp’s phone quickly rings with three new alerts.

  SECURITY PLAN 1 ACTIVATED

  SECURITY PLAN 2 ACTIVATED

  SECURITY PLAN 3 ACTIVATED

  Mr. Chimp pulls on his work hat, and quickly knuckle-walks into the woods.

  Edison studies his blueprint. He nods and smiles.

  The butterfly flaps its wings.

  Edison rolls up the blueprint.

  Edison swats the butterfly with a splat—

  —turning it into a lifeless smudge of black-and-orange-and-white butterfly guts.

  The morning sun rises slowly over the cattails at the southern end of Lake Darwin.

  0930

  One human and one small robot sit quietly in a rowboat, drifting with only the wind.

  “Look at these crazy monsters!” whispers Watson. “Maybe they are the ones wrecking all the food webs and life cycles!”

  Klink confirms Watson’s sighting, naming each of the organisms. “Cyclops. Hydra. Water bear (also known as tardigrades). Rotifers . . .”

  “Man, I would not want to tangle with them. Yuck.”

  “Ciliates. Flagellates. Amoebas . . .” continues Klink.

  One of the rotifers twirls the hairs around its crown-shaped mouth and clamps a wiggling amoeba with its jaws.

  “Yow!” says Watson.

  A lumbering water bear chomps a trapped flagellate . . . and sucks the life out of it.

  “Tardigrades can survive temperatures as high as 300 degrees Fahrenheit, and as low as minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit. They are also the first-known organisms to survive in space—almost completely unprotected—for ten days.”

  “What a beast,” says Watson. He looks up from Klink’s magnifier attachment. “Good thing he’s only half a millimeter long.”

  “It is survival of the fittest everywhere,” says Klink. “Large or small.”

  Klink extends his fishing-pole attachment.

  “Let us also capture, catalog, and observe some of this habitat’s cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates.”

  “You mean—let’s fish?”

  “Why, yes. What a wonderful, relaxing idea.”

  Klink casts a purple rubber-worm lure. He leans forward and adjusts the angle on his underwater fish-seeking camera.

  Watson casts out a Rapala lure, designed to imitate a wounded minnow.

  Klink and Watson watch the fish through Klink’s underwater camera attachment.

  “Sunfish, perch, bass,” says Watson.

  “Pike, bluegill, bullhead,” spots Klink.

  A large, dark figure passes under the boat. It inhales Klink’s worm and Watson’s Rapala, snapping their lines like they were threads.

  All the fish scatter in fear.

  A freaked-out Watson looks up from the camera viewfinder. “What in the world?”

  Klink consults his image databases and calmly reports. “That appears to have been a plesiosaur.”

  “You mean, a Loch Ness monster?!”

  Meanwhile, in the woods, one human and one large robot crash along the hiking trail.

  A white-tailed deer jumps over a fallen log and runs off. Two gray squirrels scamper up a walnut tree. A raccoon dives for cover in a blackberry bush. A chipmunk, rabbit, and field mouse race off.

  “Klank!” says Frank Einstein. “Try to be a little more quiet. We’re supposed to be observing and cataloging the forest habitat. Not scaring it to death.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” beeps Klank.

  Turning to talk to Frank, Klank doesn’t see the fallen spruce tree in front of him . . . and trips over it with an incredibly loud clanging, crashing metal smash.

  Klank’s crash sends a deep-red cardinal flying for safety. Followed by two robins, a blue jay, a bunch of sparrows, a red-headed woodpecker, a yellow-rumped warbler, two mourning doves, a red-tailed hawk, a wild turkey, a willow flycatcher, a tufted titmouse, a black-capped chickadee, and one giant great horned owl.

  “Oooops,” says Klank. He rolls over to get back on his feet. And accidentally pokes his Casio keyboard chest. The 3.16 RUMBA blasts through the woods, scaring off a brown wolf spider, two ladybugs, a Buffalo treehopper, a crane fly, a stink bug, a cloud of mosquitoes, and four grasshoppers.

  Klank whacks at his keyboard chest to turn it off, but only manages to change the RUMBA to a lively POLKA. Which scares off the remaining praying mantis, longhorned beetle, wasp, mayfly, tiger moth, centipede, katydid, jumping spider, pill bug, and three-lined potato beetle.

  Klank finally smacks his keyboard off.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  Frank Einstein laughs. “Don’t be sorry. You just scared up the best list of bird, animal, and insect life.”

  “I did?”

  Klank looks around. He sees something he has seen only in books. He is suddenly afraid. “B-b-but what kind of life is that?”

  Frank looks up from his notebook. He sees the shape Klank is pointing to. But he doesn’t know where he should list the thing slipping between the shadows in the woods.

  Because it does not look like animal, bird, or insect life.

  “It looks,” says Frank Einstein, not believing he is even saying it, “like . . . a ghost.”

  A thin figure in woodland camouflage glides past the lake, through the woods, and up the faint deer trail alongside the stream that feeds into Lake Darwin.

  Grampa Al stops and listens and looks.

  With his experienced eye, he reads the woods like a book.

  This stream used to be much bigger. Now it’s down to a trickle. In the streamside mud—raccoon tracks, duck tracks, the deep imprint of deer hooves.

  The raccoon came down to catch the crayfish, frogs, and snails in the stream.

  The duck and three ducklings crossed to their nest in the tall grass.

  The deer was walking north and jumped over the stream here.

  Grampa Al moves silently upstream. And that’s when he sees a track he has never seen before.

  Grampa Al looks quickly all around—then back at the track.

  “Whoa, buddy!”

  Grampa Al measures the track against his own footprint.

  It’s not badger or bear or even ape. Too big to be human. But definitely a foot. A very big foot.

  Grampa Al follows the tracks of the giant feet across what little is left of the stream, and right up to a towering black woven-metal fence stretching in either direction through the woods, as far as the eye can see.

  Grampa Al gives a low, soft whistle.

  No water, no insects.

  No insects, no frogs.

  No frogs, no raccoons . . .
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  “Now who would mess things up like this?”

  “Summer Science Scouts!” calls the trim silver-haired woman in a light-green dress with a dark-green web belt and hiking boots. “Each group has, on the tray in front of you, magnifying glasses, tweezers, toothpicks, and an owl pellet.”

  “It looks like my cat’s hairball,” says Anna.

  “Disgusting!” says Leslie.

  “But very similar to a hairball,” says Science Scout leader (as well as Midville Academy principal) Ms. Priscilla. “Can anyone guess what these owl pellets are?”

  “Owl food?” says Nicole.

  “Good guess . . . but no.”

  “Owl poop!” yells Jennifer.

  “Closer . . . but no.”

  Janegoodall raises her hand and answers, “It is the parts of anything the owl eats that it can’t digest.”

  “Exactly!” Ms. P. beams. “The owl has a most interesting digestive system—one that separates out whatever it cannot digest, forms it into a ball, and regurgitates it!”

  “Completely gross,” says Leslie.

  “So break apart your pellet and see what it contains.”

  The six teams of Science Scouts dissect their owl pellets, and check them out under their magnifying glasses.

  “Bones!”

  “Feathers!”

  Scout leader Ms. P. points to her diagram and explains, “Owl beaks are strong enough to tear the flesh of prey, but not strong enough to break bones. So One—the swallowed pieces of torn prey travel down the ESOPHAGUS to the PROVENTRICULUS.”

  “Teeth! I see little teeth!”

  “Two—the food travels into the VENTRICULUS, and is separated into digestible and not-digestible parts.”

  “Hair!”

  “Three—the digestible food passes farther, to the INTESTINES. But the not-digestible parts are formed into a pellet in the VENTRICULUS.”

  “I think I found a mouse toenail.”

  “Four—the VENTRICULUS pushes the pellet back up into the PROVENTRICULUS. Where it is sometimes stored for hours.”

  “I am going to barf my own lunch pellet in a minute,” says Leslie.

  “And finally, Five—” Scout leader Ms. P. thwacks her owl digestion diagram with a flourish. “The owl regurgitates the pellet!”

  Anna laughs. “We are picking apart owl puke!”

  Scout leader Ms. P. paces around the girls’ work tables. “So what do we learn from identifying the contents of the owl pellets?”

  Leslie holds her forehead and moans. “That owls are even more disgusting than I ever thought.”

  Janegoodall holds up a mouse jawbone in her tweezers. “We learn what prey the owl eats.”

  “Yes.” Ms. P. beams again. “So now use your charts to identify individual bones. See how many different types you can find.”

  “I’ve got a bird hip!”

  “Oh this is definitely a rat foot.”

  “I think I’ve got a shrew leg.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” says Ms. P.

  Janegoodall and her partner arrange their findings on a sheet of paper.

  “This is great, Ms. P.,” says Janegoodall. “But since we are out in the woods, couldn’t we learn more about owls by observing them in their natural habitat?”

  Ms. P. smiles and nods. “Spoken like a true scientist, Janegoodall. And an excellent idea. Which is why we are hiking to Darwin Park for our Owl-Spotting Sleepover!”

  “Oh, great,” says Leslie, frowning at Janegoodall. “So now we get to sleep in those nasty tents . . . and have owls puke on us.”

  “Yes!” says Janegoodall. She quickly packs her Swiss Army knife, her chocolate-cherry-nut energy bars, and her binoculars in her camouflage backpack. “Time for some real fieldwork!”

  Watson drops his fishing gear in the corner of the Einstein Labs and HQ tent. “You are not going to believe what we saw in the water!”

  Klink pulls a photo out of his printer port and places it on the wooden campsite table.

  Frank, Klank, and Grampa Al gather around to take a look.

  “Oh yes, we are going to believe it,” says Klank. “Because in the woods, we saw a ghost!”

  “Or something that looked like a ghost,” Frank corrects Klank.

  “And just as strange up the stream . . .” Grampa Al plops a plaster cast of one very large, almost human-looking foot on the pine table.

  “Bigfoot!” says Watson.

  “And a Loch Ness monster?” asks Frank.

  “And a ghost?” beeps Klank.

  “All in one place?” says Watson.

  “Very suspicious,” concludes Frank.

  Grampa Al unfolds a map of Darwin Park and spreads it out. “And even more suspicious when you look at where our three sightings happened. Here, here, and here. All on the northern edge of Darwin Park.”

  “And . . . the tracks end at a gigantic fence surrounding Park Area 51.”

  Frank rubs his head and thinks. “It may sound like the plot of a cheesy cartoon, but somebody, or something, does not want us to get into Area 51.”

  “OK,” says Klank. “I will pack our gear and we will go away.”

  “Oh no!” says Watson. “Not when we have a chance to catch the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot and a ghost.”

  Klank squeezes his metal vegetable-strainer head. “That would be fun. But we cannot break any rules.”

  “You are right to always follow your Three Laws of Robotics,” says Grampa Al. “But sometimes humans give orders that shouldn’t be followed—like this order to keep out.”

  Klank tries to think about this. But it makes no sense to his robot brain. He tries thinking again, then suddenly starts ringing like an old-fashioned telephone.

  RING-RING. RING-RING. RING-RING.

  “Well,” says Klink, “would someone please answer him?”

  “Why is Klank ringing?” asks Watson.

  “I figured we might need improved communication out here in the woods,” says Frank, “so I wired Klank with a satellite phone.”

  RING-RING. RING-RING. RING-RING.

  Frank lifts a flap under Klank’s arm and picks up an old-fashioned pay phone receiver. A satellite antenna extends out of Klank’s head.

  “Hello, Einstein Mobile Laboratories.”

  “Hey, champ!”

  “Oh, hi, Dad.”

  “Guess where we are?”

  “Olduvai Gorge, next to the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania in Africa?”

  “Wow, great guess.”

  “I gave this phone a computer-map display,” says Frank. “And . . . you told me and Grampa where you and Mom were going, remember?”

  “Ohhhhhhhh, right, right,” says Dad Einstein. “And you should see this place. Amazing! This is where scientists found fossils and stone tools from what we think are the earliest human species that modern humans evolved from.”

  “Mary and Louis Leakey,” says Frank.

  “You what?”

  “Those were the scientists. Mary and Louis Leakey.”

  “Oh, right, right. Here’s your mom.”

  “Hello, darling. We were just thinking about you. And Grampa Al. Did you remember to pack your bug spray and sunscreen?”

  “Hi, Mom. And yep. We packed everything. Because we packed Klink. And he is completely outfitted with every attachment we could need.”

  “That is so nice that you all get to take a relaxing camping trip together. It must be so nice and quiet.”

  Frank slides the picture of the Loch Ness monster and the cast of Bigfoot across the table. “Uhhhh . . . yeah. We are mostly relaxing. Checking out all of the wildlife. All Interconnected Life.”

  “Oh my goodness, the wildlife here is absolutely wonderful. Amazing what variety of species have evolved. Lions, cheetahs, giraffes, zebras—”

  “And eagles and storks and hornbills and a yellow-rumped tinkerbird!” Dad shouts in the background.

  “And rhinos and elephants—”

  “Oooooooo!” beeps Klank. “Elepha
nts! Helllooooo, Mrs. Einstein. Do you know why elephants have flat feet?”

  “Hello, Klank. No, I don’t think I know. Why do elephants have flat feet?”

  “Noooooooooo,” says Klink. “Do not let him do this!” Klink wheels out of the HQ tent as fast as he can.

  Klank lights up. “From jumping out of trees! Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  Frank shakes his head.

  “OK! Bye, Mom. Bye, Dad.”

  “Bye, Frank. Give your grampa a big hug for us.”

  “We got you this nice evolution T-shirt!”

  Frank hangs up the Klank phone.

  Klank’s satellite antenna retracts.

  Frank scratches his head—like he always does when he is thinking. “Evolution . . . different forms of life . . . I think I might have an idea, Watson.”

  “There!” whispers Janegoodall. She steadies her binoculars on a large dark-brown shape high in a tall maple tree on the edge of a field. She sharpens the focus, and spots the distinctive ear tufts of feathers that give the big bird its name.

  “A great horned owl.”

  The owl turns its head left, right, 270 degrees in either direction, almost all the way around. It uses its supersensitive hearing to pinpoint a sound below.

  Janegoodall, Anna, and Leslie unconsciously hold their breath, freezing as still and quiet as possible.

  Covered by the deep grass in the field, feeling safe from any predator, a gray squirrel chews, just a little too noisily, on an acorn.

  Giant yellow owl eyes zero in on the faint motion of the grass. The ultrapredator leans forward, pushes off with its knife-sharp taloned claws, and dives headfirst off the tree branch.

  The squirrel drops the acorn.

  The owl spreads its large wings and flaps once, making virtually no noise because of the very particular shape of its feathers.