As they approached what Madame Curie called her Shed of Discovery, Gertie noticed burn marks on the scientist’s arms, and remembered Kolt’s warnings about the rays given off by the decaying nucleus of an atom.
Kolt nudged Gertie and leaned in. “This whole place,” he whispered, “even those children’s toys—all dangerous! All . . .”
“I remember,” Gertie said, “radioactive.”
The woman overheard and looked around in surprise.
“You’ve read my work, child?”
“Um, what?”
“Radioactive! That’s the term I came up with! For when an element is giving off radiation. I’m glad you’re interested, because we need more women in science. I was only one of twenty girls in a group of two thousand students, but I came first in my class! Remember that nothing is impossible.”
Before going inside, Madame Curie said she had to top up the cauldrons with a black rock called pitchblende. She led Kolt and Gertie over to where at least two hundred sacks were piled up.
“It comes all the way from an Austrian forest by horse and wagon—the uranium has already been extracted for glass making, so it’s my job and my husband’s to isolate the other elements in it.”
Then her face darkened. “It’s such a long process—first I have to pick off all the pine needles from when it was dumped in the forest. Then I boil and crystalize it—trying to isolate something called radium. But a few days ago the dish with the purest sample we have ever collected went missing.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Kolt said buoyantly. “These things have a habit of bobbing up.”
“Well, if it doesn’t, I shall keep working,” she told them. “Nothing in this world has been able to dampen my curiosity and passion . . . yet.”
Just as Madame Curie opened up a fresh sack of pitchblende, Kolt cleared his throat. “It was so kind of you to invite us in for tea,” he said.
“The tea! Yes, of course!”
She led them inside her laboratory, which she told them was a former animal-dissection shed. On every possible countertop were glass tubes, flasks of green and yellow liquid, open flames, and the strangest smells. The floor was caked in dirt, and there were buckets where the roof leaked.
“We’re in need of funds for our research,” she admitted, “but that’s always been the case. We’re poor in money, but rich in ideas.”
As she went off to fill a copper kettle from an outside faucet, Kolt told Gertie not to drink anything if she could help it.
“This whole lab is glowing with radiation,” he reminded her. “And radiation kills living tissue, which is why at one point it was an effective treatment for cancer.”
“But if radiation is so bad, why isn’t she sick?” Gertie asked.
“She is! Didn’t you see the red marks on her arms?”
“Well, shouldn’t we warn her? What about her daughter?”
“Her daughter grows up to be rather clever herself actually, but the B.D.B.U. is crystal clear, Gertie—we can return things, but we cannot interfere in a person’s fate. Now get that bowl out of the picnic basket and put it down somewhere, before we start glowing in the dark ourselves.”
“She’s very serious, isn’t she?” Gertie said, unwrapping the protective handkerchief.
“Marie Curie? Oh, she had to be, Gertie—she lived in a time when women’s views were not taken seriously at all.”
“That’s so stupid.”
“Typical history, really, but in the end she succeeded, breaking countless barriers for women in the sciences and proving women were capable of genius—quick! Put that bowl down before she gets back.”
“Think she might know about where our missing Keepers could be?”
Kolt blinked a few times and stared at her. “Of course not! Why would she?”
“She just seems so clever, I thought . . .”
“You’re obsessed, you really are.”
“No, I’m just focused, and determined—like Marie Curie.”
Kolt shook his head. “Rescuing Keepers the way you want to is probably going to be impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible if you work hard enough,” Gertie said, remembering the great scientist’s advice.
“That’s right!” said Madame Curie, returning with a full kettle of water.
Gertie quickly placed the bowl down and pretended to inspect the contents: a tenth of a gram of radium salt.
“I’m so sorry for keeping you waiting,” Madame Curie said, putting the kettle onto an iron stovetop, “and it seems Irène is out with her father.”
“This is so interesting,” Gertie exclaimed, pointing to the grain-shaped sample of radium salt in the dish.
Madame Curie dropped the kettle with a clang. Water spilled out all over the concrete floor and onto Kolt’s shoes.
“That’s it!” she cried.
Gertie tried to appear surprised. “This little bowl is what you’ve been looking for?”
“Yes! That’s our radium salt!”
“And my feet are soaked,” Kolt muttered.
Madame Curie rushed over to the dish with the tiny rock at the bottom.
“This is it!” she cried. “The sample that dear Pierre and I have spent years on! It was just sitting there?”
“Hmmm, I suppose, yes, um . . .” Gertie stammered.
“Well, isn’t that nice?” said Kolt loudly, stepping toward the door with a squelch. “Sometimes, what you’re looking for is right under your nose all along. . . . Well, we must be going, I don’t have any spare socks, so . . .”
“But what about your tea?”
Kolt raised his dented bowler hat to say goodbye, and they shuffled over to the door. “Not thirsty anymore!”
“Good luck with your experiments!” Gertie said.
“Thank you, child. I am one of those who think that humanity will draw more good than evil from new discoveries. But are you sure you don’t want tea? Or some bread and cheese?”
“Sorry, we have to go, bye! We love you!”
* * *
‹‹ • • • ››
THEY CLIMBED BACK INTO the invisible Time Cat, then uncloaked it.
“We ‘love’ you?” Kolt said.
Gertie blushed.
“You must have really liked her,” he went on, “to blurt out something like that.”
“Well, didn’t you like her?” said Gertie.
“Of course, I respect her enormously; she’s a genius with a kind heart, a rare combination.”
Kolt then explained to Gertie that Madame and Monsieur Curie, like many scientists of their time, could have patented their ideas and become very rich from selling the information, but instead they chose to struggle and share their knowledge freely with people everywhere, in the hopes it might make the world a better place.
Listening to this reminded Gertie how important it was to keep going in her quest to rescue Keepers and maybe even her Loser brother. Like Madame Curie, she would persevere—even when it felt like everything was against her, including that stubborn old encyclopedia—the B.D.B.U.
4
A Show of Keeper Loyalty
WHEN THEY GOT BACK to Skuldark, Robot Rabbit Boy was snoring away in his bed. It was dark, and all the things in the garden were cold and still dripping wet from the hailstorm. Kolt made some tea and they sat before the warm, glowing fireplace, not speaking.
After a long night of deep sleep and dreams that were lost just moments after waking, Gertie cut herself a slice of breakfast cake and sat down. Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy were outside checking that the hailstorm hadn’t damaged the Spitfire. Gertie looked at the wall where the secret passage to the tower was. What could she do to make the B.D.B.U. take her Keeper quest seriously this time? She was about to take a bite of peach cake when she heard knocking on the window. Kolt’s face appeared
through a parted moonberry bush.
“There’s no damage! She’s ready to fly when you are.”
Gertie grunted. Another distraction. And one she was not enthusiastic about. A month ago, the aircraft had been just a hunk of rusting metal in the garden, with flat tires and weeds growing in the cockpit. She had only flown an aircraft once before—and that was in the excitement of a mission.
Outside Robot Rabbit Boy was popping moonberries again under the wing. When he heard the cottage door open, he jumped up and scuttled over.
“Lavender mush?” he said, pointing to the cockpit with a juice-stained paw. Although he had learned one or two new words since becoming part of the Keeper family, he still relied on the ones he had known when they found him in the abandoned city.
“I suppose,” Gertie said, realizing that she had to focus on the things she could do, rather than the things she couldn’t. And if there was a way to save these lost Keepers and her brother, it wasn’t by wallowing in self-pity. She took a deep breath and turned to Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy, who seemed concerned at her lack of interest in the aircraft.
“I’m grateful for all the work you’ve both done so that I can practice flying—I am just a teeny bit afraid, that’s all.”
Kolt couldn’t believe it. “I’m the one who should be concerned! You’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about, apart from dying in a horrible, blazing fireball as you slam into the sea trapped in the cockpit, burning alive.”
Gertie made a pained face.
“You’ll be fine! Don’t forget you have a rescue cushion!” Kolt went on. “Officially certified by the bounce commission of Skuldark, which is myself, Robot Rabbit Boy, and a few energetic Slug Lamps that got on the seat and jumped with us.”
“Slug Lamps can jump?”
“Well, it’s more a sort of uncontrolled flop.”
Kolt was normally cautious about any dangerous feat, and so Gertie couldn’t figure out why he had gone to great lengths to enable such a mad experiment. Maybe his lack of safety measures with the radium salt now extended to daring feats of aviation?
Kolt glanced up at some drifting clouds. “C’mon, Gertie, the weather is perfect—apart from that morning wind blowing off the sea.”
“What if the B.D.B.U. wants us to return something while I’m in the air?”
“Hmm, I suppose that could be a problem,” said Kolt, thinking aloud, “especially if there’s lightning—but you’re such a good pilot, Gertie, you’ll figure it out once you’re up there.”
“Well, okay,” she said. “But where’s the runway?”
“Don’t you see?” said Kolt, waving his arms around, “Robot Rabbit Boy and I have cleared a path to the edge of the cliff!”
“The edge of the cliff! No way!”
Gertie felt there was something else he was planning, which he hadn’t told her about. Then it dawned on her why Kolt was so eager to get the old aircraft flying again. In addition to reading the Spitfire manuals, she noticed he’d been poring over old plans from when he’d turned the Jaguar racing car into the Time Cat.
“You want to convert this old aircraft into another Time Cat! That’s why you’re so eager to get it going!”
“Well, the thought had crossed my mind,” Kolt admitted. “You are a pilot, Gertie, after all—and with the Losers more determined than ever to destroy us, it might be nice to have a flying machine in addition to a motorcar. And you’d get to drive all the time!”
“You mean fly . . .”
“It might be the edge we need to pull off a daring rescue.”
“You mean my brother?”
“If he’s ready to join us . . . and if you can fly this, Gertie—we can actually chase the Losers’ ship, Doll Head.”
“That’s true, I suppose. But a cliff-edge runway?”
“Just imagine what could be possible with a time-traveling aircraft.”
“Well, don’t we need gas? How much of that do we have under the cottage?”
Kolt looked suddenly pleased with himself. “I’ve converted the engine to drink Skuldarkian seawater.”
“What about history?” asked Gertie sensibly.
“What about it?”
“Won’t history be affected if the Aztecs are worshipping their sun god, and then we pop out of a cloud waving?”
“Well,” Kolt said, thinking on his feet, “you could say the same for the Time Cat. I’m not sure the ancient people of Mexico had British sports cars—we’ll just have to be discreet, try and go unnoticed.”
“But this is a fighter plane that fires fruit!”
“Come on, Gertie, stop putting it off—climb up into the cockpit and let’s see if this heap will fly.”
Nervously, Gertie clambered into the cockpit and strapped herself into the kitchen chair with the bounciest cushion on Skuldark.
Despite the faded black paint and a few cracked instrument panels, Kolt assured Gertie that the modified Rolls-Royce Merlin engines were even more powerful with Skuldarkian seawater pouring through them.
Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy walked around the aircraft one final time, checking the elevators, the rudder and hinge blade, the tires, and finally the propeller.
When they gave Gertie the thumbs-up, she pulled on her flying gloves, which were thin enough to operate the controls but thick enough to give some protection in the event of a cockpit fire. She set the throttle half an inch open, then pushed the fuel-gauge button. Thirty-seven gallons of Skuldarkian seawater in the lower tank. Then she shut and latched the pilot’s door, set the elevator trim with half-fuel, one division—nose down. After pressurizing the fuel lines, Gertie double-checked the hood was locked for takeoff, then set the speed control fully forward.
So far so good.
But when it came time to flick the magneto ignition switches in preparation for the engine starting, Kolt seemed to get nervous.
“Think we should measure the runway?” he shouted through the cockpit glass.
Gertie opened a little window in the hatch.
“What?”
“The manual said the runway should be four hundred yards, and I thought two hundred would be enough with the faster propeller and fuel modification, but now I’m not sure. . . .”
Gertie stared straight ahead through her flying goggles at the dots of birds drifting at the cliff edge. She could feel her hands sweating inside the gloves.
“It’ll be fine,” she said, not because she believed it, but because she didn’t feel like getting out and going through the whole thing again. And Kolt was right. If she could fly it, having a fighter plane would give them a massive advantage over Doll Head—which Gertie imagined she could blind by firing a barrage of frozen moonberries into its giant eye sockets.
She was strapped in now, and ready to go. A part of her wanted to rip off the harness, jump down from the cockpit, and run back into the cottage. But she had to try. She knew that. The increased chance to rescue her brother was worth the risk, especially if Kolt could convert the aircraft to travel through time.
And there were some safety measures in place. Kolt had insisted that Gertie strap Russian Fire Whistles to her legs, which he had dug out (with the help of a gravely concerned Cave Sprite, Sunday) from one of the 945 bedrooms under the cottage. These thick copper tubes (which Gertie thought looked like the inside of toilet rolls painted gold) allowed a person to hover in midair for about five minutes, while having the ability to move around.
When it came to landing her “kite” (pilot slang for a fighter aircraft), Kolt had said if she didn’t feel comfortable coming back down over the mashed gooseberries and chopped spinach of the vegetable patch, she could set down on the open, grassy part of Turweston Passage, just beyond the western gate to the Garden of Lost Things. This would allow her to get used to the landing gear and the wind currents that might make landing British war-birds slightly
tricky.
With Kolt and Robot Rabbit Boy staring at her through the cockpit window, Gertie started the engine, then immediately grabbed her earmuffs. The plane made the loudest, most deafening sound she had ever heard—like five hundred angry lawn mowers coughing. Even with ear protection, Gertie decided she would be stone deaf if she survived the flight.
For the first few seconds, the engine wasn’t firing evenly, and sputtered green smoke from the burning Skuldarkian seawater. But when Gertie checked the oil pressure and adjusted the fuel pump, it soon cleared. Kolt stepped back and gave a second thumbs-up through the dissipating green mist. Then he scrambled beneath the wings to remove the wedges from under the tires. Gertie adjusted the flaps to account for the pull to one side with rapid ground acceleration.
But then, just as she was about to attempt takeoff, a frantic Robot Rabbit Boy hopped up on the wing, his cute little robot eyes glowing bright red and his fur mouth moving in the shape of the words mashed potato. Gertie shook her head sternly. But his face was one of grave determination. Gertie knew if she turned the engine off now, she might be too scared to start it again. She and Kolt had told Robot Rabbit Boy, over and over, that the first flight in the Spitfire had to be Gertie by herself. But no matter how many times they said it, he kept clamping himself to the fuselage with a Magnetic Bond Feature in his tool mode settings. While it was true that magnets were a Keepers’ worst enemy (other than the Losers of course), Robot Rabbit Boy was able to switch off the magnets in his paws most of the time.
But there was no telling him. Their robot rabbit refused to get off the wing. Gertie suspected he was still hurt from being left behind when they went to visit Marie Curie in Paris. And so she gave in, motioning with her gloved hands for him to clamp on to the fuselage behind the cockpit.
With the engine roaring, they tore over the grass runway toward the cliff.
One hundred yards passed in a flash, then another fifty—then suddenly they were at the cliff edge. Gertie’s eyes moved frantically between her instrument gauges and the blue horizon as a ferocious gust of headwind lowered their ground speed and the old aircraft simply dropped off the edge of the cliff, its engine screaming. Gertie’s stomach turned inside out. They were now plummeting toward the sea in a straight dive. She imagined Kolt screaming at her to bail out. Faster and faster they fell to the dark waves. But Gertie would not abandon her fluffy friend clamped behind, and so—trusting the instinct all pilots have—she stayed calm in her gloves and goggles, knowing that if she timed it right, the momentum of her dive could be used to gather the speed they needed. A second later she pulled back on the control ring with all her strength. They were only yards now from splashing into the sea, but somehow the Spitfire responded and Gertie felt them skimming the white-capped waves—giving Robot Rabbit Boy a saltwater bath.
Gertie Milk and the Great Keeper Rescue Page 3
