Samantha Spinner and the Perplexing Pants
Page 4
Two murals were bigger than the others. They presented scenes from a factory. Workers pushed and pulled machinery as they assembled cars. The paintings were fascinating and mysterious…and kind of gloomy, too. The people in these murals looked a little like machines, and several machines looked like people. One big machine looked like a giant human ear. Another looked like a human-shaped robot.
This was clearly one of the museum’s main attractions. Dozens of men, women, and kids stood about, gazing in all directions. Like many of them, Samantha marveled at the colossal works of art.
Nipper tapped her on the shoulder.
“Uh-oh,” he whispered, pointing to the center of the room. “Over there.”
Two visitors weren’t looking up at the paintings. They were staring at a cement planter along the wall that was holding a cluster of green plants a few feet beneath the bottom of one of the large murals.
“Math police,” said Nipper.
Samantha didn’t bother to correct him. She watched the woman in the lab coat reach into the planter.
Suddenly the man and the woman turned and pointed to the entrance of the room.
“Wow! Look over there!” they both yelled at the same time. “It’s a famous billionaire internet movie star supermodel sports celebrity!”
All the visitors in the room turned to see who the famous celebrity might be.
Samantha turned to see, too.
She felt silly the moment she did. She knew there wasn’t a famous billionaire internet movie star supermodel sports celebrity wandering through the crowd. It was a trick, and she’d fallen for it.
When she turned back, the SNOW people were gone.
The SNOW people were gone!
Samantha sighed as everyone went back to staring at the courtyard walls.
“You know, Sam,” said Nipper, “I think the math police—I mean the SNOW—made that up about the movie star supermodel.”
“Of course they did,” she replied. “That was a distraction. Now help me figure out where they went.”
Samantha looked back to where she’d last seen the SNOW—the planter. When she looked more closely, she saw something red poking out between green leaves.
“Come on,” she said, and led her brother to the wall just beneath a section of the mural that showed a big machine.
She pushed away a plant leaf and realized immediately that it was a fake plastic plant.
“Just what I thought,” she said. “There’s no need for water.”
In the planter, tucked between the plastic leaves, she had revealed a small faucet with a bright red knob poking out of the dirt.
“Go ahead,” she told Nipper.
“I’m not really thirsty, Sam,” he answered.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Samantha. “I show you a secret knob, on a mysterious faucet, probably hidden there by the SNOW, and you’re not going to…”
Nipper had turned and was pointing at the entrance to the courtyard.
“Look!” he shouted. “It’s the New York Yankees!”
Everyone in the room turned to see a Major League Baseball team.
Nipper looked at Samantha and winked. Then he pointed to the faucet.
Quickly she grabbed the red handle and gave it a twist.
Chunka-chunka-chunka!
Samantha looked up at the mural. One of the huge machines that towered over the factory workers had begun to move.
A real machine had been hidden against the mural’s painted machine scenery.
Clamp!
Clamp!
Two mighty robot arms reached out and grabbed Samantha and her brother.
Chunka!
A panel swung open, and the machine arms yanked both of them through the wall.
Held fast in the mechanical arm’s grasp, Samantha rocketed up, down, and around in darkness. She heard machinery clanking and grinding. It reminded her of the pneumatic tube ride under Paris—without the tube!
“Holy cow-a-bunga!” Nipper shouted somewhere next to her in the darkness.
Before she could call out to him, the ride was over.
Chunka!
Chunka!
The arms let go, dropping Samantha beside her brother onto the cement floor of a dimly lit chamber.
“Horrible!” shouted Nipper.
“Why do you say that?” asked Samantha. “I thought you liked roller coasters.”
Nipper just grunted and pointed over her shoulder at the wall. Samantha turned around to see numbers set into the blocks of a grid that was seventeen squares long by nine squares wide.
On the floor, she spotted some faint, dusty footprints again. They led up to the wall and stopped.
“Salt prints again,” she told her brother. “This must be a door of some kind.”
“I told you,” Nipper said, pulling himself to his feet and walking over to the grid. “Math is a big, fat barrier that blocks you from going where you want to, almost all the time.”
“When did you say that?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead he reached out and pressed one of the squares, the number one hundred forty-four. It lit up.
But nothing else happened.
Samantha stared at the wall of numbers. Then she walked up to it and tapped a few of them. Each time she touched a square, its light turned on or off.
Still nothing happened.
“I’m not happy about this,” she told her brother.
Nipper looked at her. Then began pressing button after button after button.
“What are you doing?” asked Samantha.
“There,” said Nipper. “How about that? Are you happy?”
Nipper had pressed a combination of buttons to light up as a smiley face.
“Well…,” said Samantha, “it was a nice try.”
It was a little funny, but not very helpful. Somehow, the SNOW—and Uncle Paul—had gone beyond this wall. She and her brother were at a dead end. She needed to go back to Seattle and think.
Samantha adjusted her umbrella on her shoulder. Then she glanced around and spotted a red faucet handle along the wall at knee height.
“Ready to go home?” she asked her brother.
“And save my Yankees,” he answered.
Samantha sighed. Her brother had a one-track mind.
She twisted the handle.
Chunk-a! Chunk-a!
Soon they were on their way, zipping, and looping, up to the museum…and back to the one-track mine.
As soon as the robot roller coaster dropped Samantha and Nipper back into the museum courtyard, they retraced their path through the museum. Then they headed down under The Thinker, through the salt mine, and onward to the kogelbaan station. Soon they were speeding back to Seattle inside a giant rolling marble.
Samantha felt disappointed…and salty. The first thing she’d do when she got home was wash her hands and face. She looked at her salty arms and legs. Then again, maybe she would take a shower.
She looked at her umbrella. The SNOW’s compass stuck out of the handle. She yanked the sharp object free and put it into her purse. The second thing she’d do when she got home was research math weapons in her uncle’s Encyclopedia Missilium.
She took out her journal and made a grid. Then she started filling in numbers.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13…
There were so many numbers. The SNOW had some secret code or pattern to activate that light-up wall. She didn’t know where to begin, and her uncle hadn’t left her any clues.
Or had he?
“The pattern is in the plaid,” she repeated softly.
Nipper tapped her on the shoulder.
“Hey, Sam,” he said. “Did you figure out where the math police went?”
�
��They’re not the math police,” she said impatiently. “And, no. Not yet…so let me think.”
Nipper leaned forward on the yellow leather bench of the giant marble.
“Maybe you need to sit like this,” he suggested, propping his chin on his fist. He pretended to be The Thinker.
“Can’t you even be serious for two minutes?” asked Samantha.
Nipper looked at her. A thoughtful expression swept across his face, and he dropped his hands to his sides. He took a deep breath.
“Okay,” he told her. “I do have something to show you…and it’s important.”
She wasn’t sure what was coming next, but her brother really did look serious.
Nipper reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring. It had a shiny green scorpion on the top. It blinked.
“Is that the bug ring you took from the Temple of Horus?” she asked. “Didn’t you give it away to Missy Snoddgrass?”
“No, Sam,” he said. “I got this ring from the CLOUD. I have to switch it with the one on Missy’s finger, so my Yankees can—”
“Stop,” said Samantha. “Are you still thinking about baseball?”
Nipper nodded slowly.
“We were just attacked by the math police…I mean the SNOW,” she said. “We were hot on the trail of Uncle Paul when they got away and we got stuck. The pattern is in the plaid. And besides, you have far exceeded your time to rattle on and on about the Yankees.”
Nipper sat next to her fidgeting with the ring. It looked like he started to slip it onto his finger, then stopped himself.
“We need to rescue Uncle Paul,” said Samantha. “Forget about that bug ring.”
“It’s not a bug. It’s an arachnid,” said Nipper.
The ring blinked in Nipper’s hands.
“It’s a fake plastic arachnid,” Samantha corrected him.
“I know this one’s a fake,” said her brother. “But there’s a real one on Missy’s finger. And now the Yankees are losing every game they play because of a terrible ancient curse.”
“That curse is all in your mind,” said Samantha. “The Yankees are just having a bad season.”
“Time is running out,” said Nipper, his voice rising. He started waving his hands dramatically. “My Yankees are in grave danger!”
“I get it,” said Samantha. “I know you’re really upset, but—”
“You don’t get it at all, Sam,” he replied.
Nipper stared at her, looking serious, for a long time. Then he turned and stared into the ball tunnel ahead of them.
“It hurts when the Yankees lose,” he said. “But it really hurts…when you lose the Yankees.”
Absolute Value stood in the center of the dome and studied the big whiteboard. With a marker, he added up the SNOW’s sales for the year.
Fake paintings: $500,000
Fake sculptures: $1,500,000
Fake jewels: $1,000,000
Total income: $3,000,000
He nodded to himself. The SNOW’s crimes had brought in three million dollars. He smiled and looked off into the distance.
Blue sparks flew from tables where the jewelry team worked away. Sizzling and popping, the plasma carvers in their hands blazed and chopped at salt and quartz, as a fresh batch of fake diamonds and rubies took shape. A dozen of the best mathematical criminals in the world were hard at work, applying geometry to forgery.
He looked in another direction. Twenty agents hammered and chipped, making quality imitations of famous sculptures. The team calculated, measured, and carved. A fresh new copy of Michelangelo’s David was almost complete.
Absolute smiled again. Then he peered around at the edges of the dome. Far away, a team of agents packed up fake treasures and loaded them onto mine carts.
Another team polished sculptures, getting them ready for shipment.
He looked over to the booth containing the man in the green plaid pajamas. Another SNOW team was busy interrogating the mysterious man inside the big, glass box.
Another team stitched and repaired torn lab coats.
Another team popped popcorn.
Another team sharpened pencils.
He wrinkled his brow. That was a lot of teams. There were a whole lot of Super-Numerical Overachievers Worldwide.
He looked up at the big whiteboard and started writing again.
Uniforms: $100,000
Markers, pens, and pencils: $100,000
Rulers and compasses: $50,000
Electricity: $750,000
Trucks: $900,000
Gas and highway tolls: $100,000
Dome building and upkeep: $500,000
Mine cart operations: $490,000
Snacks: $9,995
Total expenses: $2,999,995
Total profits for the year: $5
“Five dollars?” grumbled Absolute. “That’s all?”
He heard footsteps approaching from the entrance tunnel and looked up to see two agents running in.
“Hey, boss!” someone called. “We just ran away from two kids!”
Absolute turned around. It was Agents 1+1=2 and 2+2=4.
“You’re interrupting my math time to tell me you’re scared of children?” he barked at them.
“No, boss,” panted 1+1=2. “We ran here to tell you about them.”
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” growled Absolute.
He looked down at the two agents. At six and a half feet tall, he towered over them. They looked up at him nervously.
“We were up in the Detroit Institute of Arts,” said 2+2=4. “We saw a girl with a red—”
“I don’t care what kind of things you saw in the museum!” snapped Absolute. “I’m busy trying to solve our money problems!”
He turned back to face the whiteboard.
“But, boss,” one of them pleaded. “The girl was carrying a—”
“Go away!” he shouted without turning around.
He stared at the board while he listened to the sound of the SNOW agents walking away. Then he turned and looked over at the prisoner in the glass booth.
The interrogation team had better get some answers out of the man in the green pajamas soon.
According to the clowns, ninjas, and others, Pajama Paul Spinner knew all kinds of ways to travel secretly around the world. He even had a super-super-secret map somewhere, with super-secret plans printed on the inside of a red umbrella.
If he could get his hands on that map, they could ditch the salt trucks and the fake weather alerts. They could sneak around the world, cheaply, quickly…and finally start making a profit!
Absolute glanced at the interrogation team again. They were walking around the booth. None of them looked happy. Some of the agents had their heads down. They all seemed frustrated.
The man in the both stood there, smiling peacefully.
The big SNOW boss sighed.
If only the man in the green plaid pajamas would stop being so mysterious and give them some straightforward answers!
After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Samantha felt much better.
Salt-free, she sat down at her desk and opened the large, hardcover book with the words Encyclopedia Missilium engraved on the cover.
Her uncle kept a whole range of odd and often-confusing books on the shelves in his apartment, and this encyclopedia was the oddest and most confusing of them all.
In the past, it had been helpful…but not always super-helpful.
Samantha had borrowed it a month ago to research the terrible clowns known as the SUN, and last week to research metal boomerangs and the daredevils known as the CLOUD. The book still sat on her desk.
She flipped forward and backward through the pages until she spotted a drawing of a compass. Then she turned back one
page to the start of the chapter.
“Chapter nineteen,” she read. “Weapons of math destruction.”
KILLER COMPASSES, RUTHLESS RULERS, AND PROTRACTOR PROJECTILES
Razor-sharp math tools are deadly weapons in the hands of the Super-Numerical Overachievers Worldwide, aka the SNOW.
This team of ninety-nine mathematicians has mastered addition, subtraction, multiplication…and imitation. They use their skills to forge famous artwork, including paintings, sculptures, and jewelry. Then they swap them with real treasures—and almost no one notices.
The SNOW creates fake weather alerts to cover their movement around the country and allow for their thievery to go unnoticed. They broadcast news of bogus blizzards, fictional frosts, and invented ice storms to distract, and they use salt trucks as transportation, relying on the assumption that the trucks are there to salt the roads. The SNOW then steals treasures and leaves forgeries in their place, and no one realizes that a crime has been committed.
To date, the SNOW has used their fake alerts and forgeries to rob museums and galleries only in the United States. However, if they could find a secret way to travel around the world, then no museum, gallery, or private collection would be safe from their tricks, or their razor-sharp blades.
The SNOW’s headquarters is located underneath an art museum somewhere in the United States. Even if you can find it, you won’t be able to get in unless you know their secret sequence.
See also CALCU-LASERS, PLASMA CARVERS
“Secret sequence,” said Samantha out loud.
Slam!
She closed the book a little harder than she’d intended.
She had traced the SNOW to their headquarters, almost. She had gotten all the way to their secret number wall. But she definitely didn’t know the secret sequence that would get her inside.
“The pattern is in the plaid,” she said once again.