Robot Trouble (22 page)

“Well, climb up on the front of the boat and see if you can pick up Black Glove's latest transmitter,” said Roger. “If Sherlock is right, it must be planted somewhere near the mouth of the harbor.”

Ray looked at Roger nervously. “I'm not the world's greatest swimmer.”

“I'm not asking you to swim. I just want you to use the scanner to see if you can spot the transmitter. You understand how it works better than any of the rest of us. But if you want one of us to go up instead…”

“I didn't say that!” protested Ray. He glanced around at the others. “I'll go. Just make sure you pull me out if I fall in.”

“Of course,” said Trip. “If we don't, we'll be stuck taking care of all that stuff you had in your pockets.”

“Yuk-yuk,” said Ray. Bracing himself on the windshield, he climbed around onto the prow of the boat. Then he lay on his stomach and extended the current detector in front of him.

While Trip and Hap went below to change into the scuba gear, Rachel began steering the craft in long sweeps back and forth across the front of the harbor.

Half an hour went by. The wind grew stronger. Rachel began to have trouble keeping the boat steady as it crested the increasingly stiff waves.

“If we don't spot the transmitter in a few minutes, I think we'd better head in,” she said nervously. “I don't think I can control the boat much longer.”

A light rain began dappling the waves.

“I hate to turn back without finding it,” said Roger. “Who knows what information Black Glove might get off Anza-bora between now and tomorrow?”

Hap cleared his throat. “I don't want to be a wet blanket—”

“You won't have much choice if this rain keeps up,” said Wendy, interrupting him.

“Cute, Wendy. But if we're lucky, the storm will be like you.”

“Exciting?”

“No. Short.”

Roger, well aware of Wendy's low tolerance for short jokes, grabbed her shoulders to keep her from jumping at Hap.

“What I was trying to say,” continued Hap, ignoring the Wonderchild's glare, “was that we have to consider the possibility that Sherlock was wrong. Maybe there isn't a transmitter here.”

“Not a chance!” cried Trip.

“Look, it's a fantastic program,” said Hap. “But we both know it still has some weak points—”

He was interrupted by a shout from Ray. “Stop the boat! I think I've got something!”

Concentrating on dealing with the waves, Rachel was so startled by Ray's shout that she pulled back on the throttle too hard and accidentally threw the boat into reverse.

It was as if they had run into a brick wall.
The Merry Wanderer
shuddered, lurched to a stop, then shot backward with a roar. Crying out in dismay, Rachel jammed the throttle back to neutral. The boat began to slow. But it was too late for Ray. The rapid change in direction had sent him flying off the bow. He hit the water about twenty feet ahead of them, then disappeared beneath the waves.

“There he is!” cried Wendy as Ray came gasping to the surface. He was floundering and shouting for help.

“You guys had better get out there,” said Roger to Trip and Hap. “He's in big trouble!”

“We're on our way,” said Hap. He and Trip, now clad in full scuba gear, flipped backward over the side of the boat. Within seconds they were heading toward the spot where Ray thrashed desperately in the water.

The wind continued to rise, whipping the waves higher and higher. The rain became thicker. Wendy had all she could do to spot the Gamma Ray as he struggled to keep his head above the water. “Come on, guys,” she muttered to herself. “He needs help
now!”

Trip was the first to reach Ray. Hap was close behind him. To their surprise, they found their friend clinging to the handles of a metal sphere about the size of his beloved basketball.

“I got it, guys,” he whispered wearily. “I got the transmitter!”

Then he went under.

Hap swam beneath him, grabbed him from behind, and pulled him to the surface.

The Gamma Ray was unconscious when they broke through. Hap tried to pry his arms from the transmitter, but found that Ray was gripping the thing almost as if it were a life preserver.

Spitting out his air tube, he yelled, “Trip, I can't get him to let go of the transmitter!”

“Then let's just haul him over to the boat.”

“We can't! The damn thing is anchored in somehow!”

“I'll take care of it,” said Trip. Slipping his own air tube back into his mouth, he plunged beneath the surface. His heart sank when he saw the chain trailing from the metallic ball locked in Ray's grip. It stretched down until it was lost from sight in the deep blue water.

Wondering how far it was to the bottom, Trip took an underwater torch from his utility belt and began trying to burn through one of the links.

Seconds after Trip disappeared beneath the surface, Wendy spotted a new danger.

“Shark!” she screamed. “Hap, there's a shark behind you!”

Spinning in the water, Hap shouted in horror at the sight of the huge black fin bearing down on him and Ray.

Then the heavens opened up as the rain began for real, falling in sheets from the iron-gray sky. Within seconds the three kids in the boat were as wet as the ones in the water.

The Merry Wanderer
was thrown from wave to wave. Leaning over the edge, Wendy craned her neck and tried to shield her eyes from the pounding rain.

It was useless; she had lost sight of the boys—and the shark.

Underwater, unaware of either shark or storm, Trip had a shock of his own: The transmitter chain was being retracted! Whatever it was anchored into was slowly drawing the transmitter—and with it the three of them—toward the bottom of the sea.

Hap, clutching the still unconscious Gamma Ray in his arms as he fought the waves, felt himself being pulled down. Fighting back a surge of fear, he slipped his air tube between his lips, then clamped one hand over Ray's nose and mouth. He cursed the around-the-neck design that kept him from sharing his hose with Ray as he tried to pry his friend's arms from the metal ball. It was no use; Ray was clutching it as if his life depended on it. But the truth was, his life depended on his letting go of it!

Come on, Trip
, Hap thought desperately.
Get us out of this mess!

Several feet below him, Trip was trying to do just that. Glancing up from the link he was trying to sever, he saw that the slowly retracting chain had pulled his friends beneath the rain-spattered ocean surface.

Angrily he redoubled his efforts with the torch. He had to get them loose!

“They're under again!” cried Wendy, who had spotted Hap just in time to see him disappear beneath the waves.

“Hold your course, Rachel!” yelled Roger. “We've got to get over to them!”

“I can't!” cried his twin. “It's too—”

Rachel's words were cut off by a huge wave washing over the side of the boat.

Rachel clung to the wheel.

Roger clung to Rachel.

Wendy had nothing to cling to. When the wave was gone, so was she.

Four of the gang were in the water now. The storm continued to rage, the waves growing higher and higher.

And as the transmitter pulled him deeper into the water, Hap Swenson looked up to see the enormous shark circling overhead.

I've heard of being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea
, he thought bitterly,
but this is ridiculous
.

His conviction that things could not possibly get worse was proved wrong when a panel slid aside on the front of the transmitter Ray was clutching so tenaciously.

Beneath the panel was a glowing time display.

Its numbers were changing, counting down from 60.

When they hit 55 the transmitter itself began to glow.

Hap's stomach tightened into a painful knot. Black Glove's transmitters had a habit of self-destructing once discovered. He had a sudden, terrible feeling that this one was about to do the same thing.

Only this time it was going to happen in a very big way.

And Ray was still clutching the bomb as tightly as ever.

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Forever Begins Tomorrow
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A Personal History by Bruce Coville

I arrived in the world on May 16, 1950. Though I was born in the city of Syracuse, New York, I grew up as a country boy. This was because my family lived about twenty miles outside the city, and even three miles outside the little village of Phoenix, where I went to school from kindergarten through twelfth grade.

Our house was around the corner from my grandparents' dairy farm, where I spent a great deal of time playing when I was young, then helping with chores when I was older. Yep, I was a tractor-ridin', hay-bale-haulin', garden-weedin' kid.

I was also a reader.

It started with my parents, who read to me (which is the best way to make a reader)—a gift for which I am eternally grateful. In particular it was my father reading me
Tom Swift in the City of Gold
that turned me on to “big” books. I was particularly a fan of the Doctor Dolittle books, and I can remember getting up ahead of everyone else in the family so that I could huddle in a chair and read
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
.

I also read lots of things that people consider junk: Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and zillions of comic books. In regard to the comics, I had a great deal going for me. My uncle ran a country store just up the road, and one of the things he sold was coverless comic books. (The covers had been stripped off and sent back to the publishers for credit. After that, the coverless books were sent to little country stores, where they were sold for a nickel apiece.) I was allowed to borrow them in stacks of thirty, read them, buy the ones I wanted to keep, and put the rest back in the bins for someone else to buy. It was heaven for a ten-year-old!

My only real regret from those years is the time I spent watching television, when I could have been reading instead. After all, the mind is a terrible thing to waste!

The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher, Mrs. Crandall, gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I had been doing poorly at writing all year long because we always had to write on a topic Mrs. Crandall chose. But this time, when I was free to write whatever I wanted, I loved doing it.

Of course, you think about doing many different things when you're a kid, but I kept coming back to the thought of being a writer. For a long time my dream job was to write for Marvel Comics.

I began working seriously at writing when I was seventeen and started what became my first novel. It was a terrible book, but I had a good time writing it and learned a great deal in the process.

In 1969, when I was nineteen, I married Katherine Dietz, who lived around the corner from me. Kathy was (and is) a wonderful artist, and we began trying to create books together, me writing and Kathy doing the art.

Like most people, I was not able to start selling my stories right away. So I had many other jobs along the way, including toymaker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, and assembly line worker. Eventually I became an elementary school teacher and worked with second and fourth graders, which I loved.

It was not until 1977 that Kathy and I sold our first work, a picture book called
The Foolish Giant
. We have done many books together since, including
Goblins in the Castle
,
Aliens Ate My Homework
, and
The World's Worst Fairy Godmother
, all novels for which Kathy provided illustrations.

Along the way we also managed to have three children: a son, Orion, born in 1970; a daughter, Cara, born in 1975; and another son, Adam, born in 1981. They are all grown and on their own now, leaving us to share the house with a varying assortment of cats.

A surprising side effect of becoming a successful writer was that I began to be called on to make presentations at schools and conferences. Though I had no intention of becoming a public speaker, I now spend a few months out of every year traveling to make speeches and have presented in almost every state, as well as such far-flung places as Brazil, China, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh.

Having discovered that I love performing and also that I love audiobooks, in 1990 I started my own audiobook company, Full Cast Audio, where we record books using multiple actors (sometimes as many as fifty in one book!) rather than a single voice artist. We have recorded over one hundred books, by such notable authors as Tamora Pierce, Shannon Hale, and James Howe. In addition to being the producer, I often direct and usually perform in the recordings.

So there you go. I consider myself a very lucky person. From the time I was young, I had a dream of becoming a writer. With a lot of hard work, that dream has come true, and I am blessed to be able to make my living doing something that I really love.