by Maggie Allen
Maggie’s thoughts turned to Carl Gablenz.
On the Earth of the past, it was the pilots who had blazed the trails into the frontiers of the day. Over continents and oceans and across the globe, there was always someone who had to do it first so that others could follow. Flying started as adventure for the few, and through their daring eventually became a safe and indispensable means of travel for all. As it was on the blue planet, so it is again on the red one.
Carl Gablenz was not a stuntman. He was a pioneer, and somewhere another small future explorer was waiting for his safe return. Perhaps the two of them really weren’t so different after all. They might even do the same things before flying.
“Coffee.” Maggie McConachie smiled. An atmospheric physics journal and some heliocentric jazz, she decided, would go very nicely with that.
Press Release
Date: Ls 118.74, 59 A.L.
Source: The Bessie Coleman Foundation
Carl Gablenz has been rescued by the Mars Search and Rescue Service and is currently recovering at the Syrtis Station medical facilities. Mr. Gablenz expressed his deep gratitude to the courageous personnel of MarsSAR, and thanked all those who have sent well-wishes from across the solar system. Although his record-setting flight attempt was cut short, valuable scientific data was collected that will help researchers at Thomas Mutch University improve their models of the Martian atmosphere, which promises to make future air travel safer. Mr. Gablenz also vowed to make another attempt at the Martian flight duration record as soon as possible.
“It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery,” said Mr. Gablenz. “It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding our horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.”
The Recondite Riddle of the Rose Rogue
by Dawn Vogel
Dawn Vogel has been published as a short fiction author and an editor of both fiction and non-fiction. Her academic background is in history, so it’s not surprising that much of her fiction is set in earlier times. By day, she edits reports for historians and archaeologists. In her alleged spare time, she runs a craft business, helps edit Mad Scientist Journal, and tries to find time for writing. She lives in Seattle with her awesome husband (and fellow author), Jeremy Zimmerman, and their herd of cats. Visit her at http://historythatneverwas.com.
Chrysanthemum was the first to notice, as she often was. Some might have accused her of being a busybody, but she preferred to think of herself as observant. As the youngest daughter, at age eight, her job was to make minor repairs on the flowers and to mark any flowers in need of major repairs for Mother to take care of later. So Chrysanthemum had become familiar with most of the flowers and spent a considerable part of her day walking down paths, looking for anything that needed to be fixed.
As she passed through the rose garden at the heart of the greenhouse, she marveled that she had not seen any of Father's clockwork bees buzzing past her, heading for the prize of the collection, the jeweled roses. Dripping with gemstones that glittered like dewdrops, these exquisite flowers fetched an enormous price at the market. They were also very rare. The first five jeweled roses that Chrysanthemum's maternal grandfather, Leopold Brecht, had lovingly crafted and named after his five daughters, produced but a few new blooms each year. The "baby" roses could be sold, but the "mothers" remained protected in the mechanical garden.
The first rose had been crafted from scrap iron and yellow sapphires, the edges of the metal ground until they lost their jagged edges, and then the whole piece polished until it shone. It was the largest of the five, the prototype design from which Brecht had been able to gradually make the roses smaller and more refined. The second rose was all steel and rubies, the third rose of caesium with emeralds, the fourth rose made from bronze and garnets, and the fifth and most delicate rose of copper and amber.
But now Chrysanthemum saw only four of the large jeweled roses. Counting again, she identified the missing rose, the smallest of the "mothers." She immediately reached for her notebook and pocket watch. "9:37 a.m. Jeweled rose Leona is not in the rose garden," she wrote in a flowing cursive. She tucked away her notebook and brought her pinky fingers to her mouth, preparing to whistle for her older sister, Marigold (who was twelve and was nearly as clever as Chrysanthemum, or so the younger girl believed), when suddenly she gasped.
Near the edge of one of the paths, away from the center of the greenhouse, a bit of loose soil marred the tidy walkway. All the family members who tended the garden were fastidious about keeping the paths pristine. This confirmed her suspicion immediately.
Breaking into a run toward the cottage, she shouted, "Mother, Father, Leona has been stolen!"
"Ah-ah-choo!" Constable Lawrence sneezed again before blowing his nose loudly into his handkerchief. "Apologies, ma'am. I'm afraid that I'm dreadfully allergic to flowers."
"More accurately, you're allergic to the pollen," Marigold corrected him. She had begun studying the intricacies of the workings of the garden and considered herself an expert on the subject. "If you were allergic to the flowers, the ones we have here wouldn't bother you, because they're made of metal. But the pollen in them is just like that of natural flowers."
Constable Lawrence regarded the girl coolly. "You don't say."
"Come along, girls," Mother said as she turned to walk away from the rose garden. "Let's leave the constables to their business and get back to our own."
Marigold and Chrysanthemum shared a quiet look, then began to follow their mother. Within minutes, both had split off from the main path and looped around to meet up behind a large bush with gently clinking leaves. The bush was a perfect place for them to hide and watch the constables at work.
"I don't think they're going to find anything, Marigold," Chrysanthemum confided.
"You showed them the dirt, and they didn't even look at it twice," Marigold replied sadly.
From the other side of the bush, the female constable's voice resounded. "Wild place they've got here, don't ya think?" Constable Jefferson asked, smiling at her partner.
"Downright unnatural," Constable Lawrence replied. "How d'ya suppose it all works?" He peered intently at one of the large jeweled roses, which had closed itself up as though it were nighttime. Although the roses were not meant to be sensitive to such things, they often exhibited defense mechanisms, like hiding their brilliance in dangerous times.
Marigold leaned in closer to her sister's ear. "The roses are hiding. Do you think one of the constables could be the thief?"
"No," Chrysanthemum whispered a bit crossly. "I've read enough detective stories, and I'm fairly sure that anyone as inefficient as these two could not be the culprit. I'm a little chagrined that they are the only investigators that the precinct bothered to send. They're going to need our help, I think."
Marigold nodded. "You go look for tracks while you check on the flowers. I'll oil the pansies and stay near the rose garden. Give a call if you need any help."
Chrysanthemum whistled softly, mimicking the sound made by a yellow-bellied warbler.
"And they got mechanical birds, too!" Constable Jefferson exclaimed, flabbergasted.
Chrysanthemum walked slowly along the paths of the garden. She moved as quietly as she could, fearing that perhaps the thief had not yet left the premises. While she was certain that she knew enough to find evidence of how the thief had entered the greenhouse, she was not certain that she could escape if she found the brigand still lurking within the building. The mechanical garden was also a large enough place that if she called for help, her family might not be able to reach her quickly enough.
For nearly half an hour, she tiptoed around to various patches of flowers, looking both for damaged flowers and any sign of an incautious intruder. Not surprisingly, she found both in the same place. In the midst of the heliotropes, a large crushed patch showed evidence of having had a boot planted in the middle of it.
"Poor little thing," she murmured, as she looked closer at the ruined
plant. The footprint was large, and the crumpled bits of the metallic plant were now embedded in the soil beneath it.
Scanning the area, Chrysanthemum felt like something was out of place, but she could not place it at first. She carefully enumerated the flowers located in this part of the garden. "Heliotropes, balloon flowers, nasturtiums, and clematis."
Then she paused as she noticed the broken edges of a clematis vine, and in it, she saw the thief's means of entry and escape—one of the window panels in the greenhouse had been removed. With a sigh, she whistled for Marigold.
Marigold watched the two constables with rapt attention as she went through the motions of oiling the flowers. Her chores were so regular that she barely needed to look at what she was doing, and still she did not spill a drop of oil. However, the longer she watched the constables looking at the flowers instead of looking for clues, the more her brow wrinkled and her mouth dropped into a frown.
"Pardon me," she finally said, pointing to a slight indentation at the edge of one of the paths. "I believe the thief may have gone this way. I think this is a shoe print."
Constable Jefferson looked in Marigold's direction and shook her head dismissively. "Don't be silly, girl. We have a good lead on where the thief would have gone."
"But don't you want to learn how he got into the greenhouse?"
"Not necessary," replied Constable Lawrence, speaking through his crumpled handkerchief. "All we need is to find your grandfather's creation and return it. And we have all of the evidence we need to do that. Please bid your mother good day."
A piercing whistle broke the calm of the greenhouse. Marigold forced her face into a tight smile before curtseying and turning her back. As soon as she was no longer facing the constables, she rolled her eyes. It was certainly a good thing that she and Chrysanthemum were on the case!
"What did you find?" Marigold asked as she reached Chrysanthemum's side, breathless.
"The thief destroyed this patch of heliotropes and ripped down some of the clematis, probably when he jumped through that panel," Chrysanthemum pointed glumly at the missing window. "Really, I'm a better detective than those two fools the precinct sent down, and I'm only eight years old."
Marigold patted her sister's arm gently. "That's right, Chrysie, you are."
"Now I've got to remove the crushed flowers and get Father to cut a new pane for the window," Chrysanthemum sighed. "At least the clematis is the new self-healing variety. Once we get the window pane back in place, it'll grow back in no time."
"Before Father repairs the crime scene, let's think about what we know," Marigold suggested.
"Oh yes, what we know," Chrysanthemum beamed for a moment. "The thief is a man, or a woman with very large feet. This crushed patch is nearly 10 inches long. I think it's a man who weighs a bit more than Father, because of how compressed the heliotropes are..."
"But he jumped through the window," Marigold interrupted.
"I've taken that into consideration. I still maintain that he is a heavier man."
"Good, go on then."
Chrysanthemum thought for a moment. "He knew what he was looking for. At night, with all of the flowers closed and all of the paths dark, he knew to go to the center of the garden and take one of the mother roses. That means he's been here before."
"Yes, that seems likely. But we have so many visitors to the garden every Saturday that it would be hard to say which of them might have decided to steal a rose."
"He would also need to have some sort of good connections, I would think," Chrysanthemum mused. "Everyone in Dover knows of Grandfather's creations. The constables apparently think that they'll find the missing rose at the flower market. But he wouldn't be able to sell it there. He would need to smuggle it out of the city to a place where no one would know who the real owner was."
"Do you think perhaps a rival inventor hired someone to steal the rose? Someone who wanted to take it apart and learn Grandfather's secrets?"
"That could be it! We can look in the guest register tonight to see if anyone suspicious has been to the garden recently."
"I'll hurry back to the cottage and tell Father about the missing pane," Marigold said as she moved toward the path. "And then I'll bring you a transplant pot for the heliotropes. Perhaps Mother can fix them."
"Cyril von Winter?" Marigold read.
"I think he works for the Mayor," Chrysanthemum mused.
"Severin Corvidus?"
"No, he was arrested two days after he visited."
"Adolphus Cromwell?"
"What are you girls playing at?" Father had put down his newspaper and regarded his two daughters.
"We're trying to find someone who has been to the garden recently and who might work for one of Grandfather's rivals."
Father laughed and raised his newspaper again. "Ah, my little detectives. Mother says the constables who visited today were not half as clever as the two of you."
Marigold and Chrysanthemum shared a puzzled glance.
"Do you think he believed us?" Marigold mouthed silently. Chrysanthemum shook her head.
"Adolphus Cromwell only looks suspicious. He's a very nice man. Who's next?" Chrysanthemum asked.
"Lucretia Wynter."
"Lucky Lucy! Sure, she's big enough that she could have made that footprint!"
Father chimed in, reading from the paper. "'Lucky Lucy Behind Bars.' Sorry girls, I think she's off your suspect list. By the way, what's this about a footprint?" Only his arched eyebrows and creased forehead were visible over the top of the paper.
"Whoever came in through that open pane left a 10-inch-long footprint in the heliotropes that crushed the blooms all the way to the soil," Chrysanthemum mumbled.
"Hmmm," Father replied.
"What, Father?" Marigold inquired, scrambling to his side.
"That sounds like a plain sneak thief, not an inventor's assistant. And I only know one inventor who would hire someone like that. Doctor Dieter Nyx."
"But if he hired a sneak thief, it could be anyone in the register," Chrysanthemum wailed. "We need something more if we're going to track down the culprit."
"I have just the thing," Father said with a smile.
Father, Marigold, and Chrysanthemum clustered around the jeweled roses. Marigold held the oil can while Chrysanthemum held a small jar filled with pollen and a paintbrush and looked skeptically at Father. "You're sure this will work?"
"It's worth a shot, I think." He shrugged slightly. "Marigold does such a good job with oiling these beauties that they're difficult to get a good grasp on while wearing gloves. Anyway, if it doesn't reveal any fingerprints, it will at least be a new experiment to see if we can cross-pollinate the jeweled ladies and create something a bit hardier."
Marigold gingerly inserted the tip of the oil can into one of the tightly closed jeweled roses. The petals clinked softly and separated far enough to accept the oil that dribbled out. Chrysanthemum quickly brushed a pollen-laden stroke across the expanded petals and gasped as the whorls of fingerprints became visible against the dark exterior of the jeweled rose.
Father leaned in carefully with a piece of adhesive cellophane and pressed it to the side of the rose. Then he put the cellophane onto a dark sheet of paper. "There we are. We'll take that to the precinct tomorrow and give it to one of the men I know there. And then I'll give him a piece of my mind about those lousy constables that came by earlier today. Shall we see what the rest of them reveal?"
The next morning, Marigold and Chrysanthemum were up early, both girls dressed in their Sunday best. When they arrived at the breakfast table, they found a note from their father between their places.
Dearest flowers,
I've been called to the city early today. Take the fingerprints and call on Inspector Gaspard Greymoor at the precinct. Give him my calling card and tell him what you know. You are both so clever and charming that I'm certain he will help you.
All of my love,
Father
"We're on our ow
n," Marigold announced.
"Oh dear," Chrysanthemum moaned.
"We'll be fine, Chrysie. The precinct isn't too much farther than the church. I know the way."
"But do you think the inspector will really help us?"
"If Father says he will, then I'm sure he will. Come along, it will be an adventure!"
The precinct house was much larger than Marigold remembered, but she did know exactly where it was. The girls stood on the front steps, holding hands. In their free hands, Marigold clutched their father's calling card, and Chrysanthemum clutched the sheets of fingerprints that they had recovered from two of the jeweled roses. After a few moments, a window to the right of the stairs opened, and a ginger-haired young man stuck his head out. "Well come on in, girls! Can't have you standing on the steps all day!"
The Marsh sisters looked at each other and scurried up the stairs, heading to the right as soon as they located a hallway. The ginger-haired man leaned against a doorframe, his arms crossed.
"So what are you here for? Murder, arson, robbery?"
"Robbery," Marigold responded.
The young man blinked, then grinned slyly. "Turning yourselves in, are you?"
"No! We're investigating a robbery. That is, we need help investigating a robbery. We need Inspector Gaspard Greymoor."
"Well then, you've come to the right place." The young man bowed deeply, then eyed the girls carefully. "You're Doctor Marsh's daughters?"
Chrysanthemum's eyes widened. "Yes, I'm Chrysanthemum Marsh, and this is my sister Marigold Marsh. But how did you know?"
"Your sister's carrying his card," Inspector Greymoor said, stepping into his office.
Again the sisters shared a long glance, but they followed the young inspector into his office. He was already seated behind the desk, his legs outstretched across one corner. Pulling a small notepad from his breast pocket, he regarded the girls with a serious expression. "What do you have for me?"
