Attack of the Spider Bots (14 page)

Scilla nudged Beamer, but Beamer already had an idea popping into his head. “Hey, we've gotta little problem. You just might be the guy who can help us fix it.” Scilla and Ghoulie gave Beamer a questioning look.

“Well, I'll check my corporate calendar,” Jack answered cheerfully, “but I suspect I can move a couple of appointments around.”

The block which enclosed Solomon Parker's house was much bigger than Ghoulie had thought. It was already getting dark, and he was going to have to get home pretty soon for dinner. “What are you looking for?” he shouted to Jack, who had already led them almost halfway around the block. “I don't think you're going to find an open gate or a secret passage, if that's what you're looking for.”

“You'd be surprised,” Jack whispered loudly over his shoulder.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Ghoulie called to Scilla, who was directly in front of him. “I hate it when people put hidden meanings into their words.”

“Shhh!” Scilla hissed back at him. “Keep your voice down. We're supposed to be sneaking into this place, not broadcasting our arrival to the world.”

“Okay, okay,” Ghoulie whispered in a huff. “I just don't see how we can sneak into this place without invisibility cloaks and antigravity pods, and they haven't been invented yet.”
Why doesn't anybody ever listen to me?
He'd already considered the possibilities and there was just no way! “You guys haven't forgotten about those robots, have you?”

“Look, Ghoulie,” Beamer said impatiently, “The two Mrs. Drummonds are out of the house right now. We may never have another chance to find out what they're up to. And when it comes to finding hidden spaces and getting around obstacles, Jack's an expert.”

“All right,” Jack said as he suddenly pulled to a stop — too suddenly as Scilla back-ended him, and Ghoulie back-ended her, making Jack lurch forward another step “Will y'all quit the Keystone Cops thing,” Jack said as he straightened his hat. “I think I see a way.” He jogged across the street and then took off down a sidewalk.

“Hey!” Ghoulie shouted. “You are going the wrong way!”
Clearly the guy's brain cells were iced over from too many
nights in the cold air.
“The house is back — ”

“Ghoulie — hush!” Scilla hissed at him.

“Trust him, Ghoulie,” Beamer said as he started chasing Jack.

About half a block later, Jack stopped beneath a cluster of trees. Jack launched himself up one of the smaller trees. “Come on,” he shouted down to them. “You guys ought to be experts at climbing trees by now.”

“Yeah,” groaned Ghoulie, “but there's no tree house up this one, and it's a block away from Mr. Parker's house. I don't need any exercise. I get enough P.E. in school.”

“Move it, Ghoulie,” Beamer said.

Jack cut up through a smaller tree until he could hop over to one of the lower branches on the big elm tree. That's what most of the trees were around here — elm trees. “Okay, so there'd better be a point to all this,” Ghoulie grumbled as he joined the others beside Jack.

“This is something I discovered on the way over to your tree ship,” Jack said. “I'd seen some cop cars about a block from your place and hid in a tree. Check it out,” he said as he pointed along a line of trees

Ghoulie reluctantly followed Jack's finger. After he uncrossed his eyes, he saw a seemingly endless stretch of entwining branches. “So,” he said with a smirk, “the neighborhood has a lot of trees.”

“Very big and very old trees,” echoed Scilla, her eyes squinting as if she were trying to decipher an ink-blot picture.

Beamer had almost the same expression on his face. Then his eyes widened. “There's a tunnel!” he said in astonishment.

18

Lost Treasure

“A what?” Ghoulie asked as he tilted his head for another look.

“Yep,” Jack said as proudly as if he were Indiana Jones finding a hidden door to an ancient temple. “You have passages through your trees.”

Now even Ghoulie's eyes grew wide. “Whoa! You're right.” The tree branches formed an arch around an open space in which there were practically no branches. The branches below were thicker than usual, making it easier to step from branch to branch while holding on to the branches above. “How could that happen? I mean, who — ”

“Or what,” added Scilla, “would have made a passage through trees?”

“Good question,” said Jack. “These trees are probably a couple hundred years old. It could have been made any time.”

“Yeah,” said Ghoulie, “but it had to have been continually used over the years or the branches would have filled in.”

The passage through the trees wove around, turning one way or another or going up and down, but never so extreme that they couldn't keep going. Once in awhile, another passage intersected theirs, winding away to who knew where. Finally Jack stopped. Mr. Parker's house lay across the street. The path through the trees continued across his yard all the way to the house.

A few minutes later, they quietly dropped from a tree branch onto the roof, not far from a row of attic windows.

“What if the windows are locked?” asked Ghoulie, on a roll in the complaint department.

That's what getting up early on Saturday morning does to you
, thought Beamer. “It's possible,” he said, “but most people don't bother to lock attic windows. We don't.”

He was wrong. Mrs. Drummond was definitely not “most people.” The rooftop SWAT team went from window to window, looking in vain for one she or her robot crew had overlooked. What was worse, Ghoulie was finding all sorts of ways to say “I told you so.”

Luckily, or perhaps thanks to a nudge from a passing angel, Jack took a shortcut across the ridge of the roof and knocked loose an old vent. They climbed in. It was a tight squeeze. Taking a breath was not an option unless you wanted to become a permanent fixture in the ventilation system. Once Jack was through the opening, he was able to haul himself down a beam in the steep-angled ceiling to the floor. Then he stacked up boxes like toy blocks for the others to climb down.

The attic was loaded with toys or robots — it was hard to tell which — in every size and shape. Since most of them had missing pieces — heads, arms, feet, rollers, eyes, etc., Beamer figured these were Sol's rejects.

It might have made a great playground if it weren't for the fact that the whole menagerie was wrapped together in about fourteen layers of cobwebs. The rocketeering gang hadn't gone more than thirty feet before they'd destroyed half a dozen spider civilizations.

Yep, no question about it — sooner or later those little buggers
were going to take over the world. For that matter, the web in his
attic might be the headquarters for a spider invasion fleet!
Beamer grabbed a robotic arm and began using it like a machete to clear away a path through the webs.

All of a sudden, the silence was broken by a voice that rumbled like a truck engine: “State your name and purpose!” They whirled around and were suddenly blinded by a light.

There was only one thing to do: panic! Like rats scurrying from a fire, they scattered about the attic.

“Surrender or I will be forced to subdue you.” It was a broken-down robot! The machine careened about pursuing them. “You cannot escape.” With every few words, the machine's deep voice suddenly screeched in a high pitch like the voice of a boy going through puberty. The chase wound all over the attic — up, over, down, and around all the junk and the sticky webs. Before they knew it, they'd been herded like cattle into a corner of the attic. Then the robot shot a gun: a net flew out. They tried to dive out of the way, but the net covered them like a fresh catch of flopping tuna.
Okay,
Beamer thought,
so they were tuna cattle, except that, by
now, they were all almost totally wound up in gummy spider silk.
Well, one thing was clear — from mammal to fish to insect — they
were definitely working their way down the food chain!

“It's a robot,” he whispered loudly, “with a light on its head like a coal miner — probably an earlier version of Solomon's sentry robots.”

So much for rescuing Mr. Parker! Who was going to rescue them?
Assuming they would live long enough to be rescued, that is.
For one thing, Beamer had forgotten to tell anyone where they were going. Of course, if he had told them, they'd have never let him go on this cockamamie expedition. For another, the robot was tightening the net — very tightly. Beamer might have to give up breathing again. Just when his ankle was about to become connected to Scilla's chin, a shadow appeared in front of the robot's light beam and Beamer heard a click.

“I always say, when in doubt, try the on/off switch.”

That was Jack's voice. Beamer figured that he had managed to dive out of the way as the rest of them were being penned in and circled around behind the robot.

“Get your toe out of my nose,” Beamer grumbled at Scilla as he slowly unwound his elbows and knees. “Why are you wearing toeless shoes in the middle of December, anyway?”

“Hey, there's nothin' wrong with my toes,” Scilla shot back at him.

“Now we've gotta find our way to Mrs. Drummond's office,” Ghoulie said.

“Who said she had an office?” asked Beamer.

“If she pays the bills and manages the household, like Sol said,” answered Ghoulie, “she's bound to have some place where she keeps all her household records. And that's where we'll probably find whatever we're looking for.”

“Yeah, I think I saw it when we were here before,” Scilla said thoughtfully. “She'd left the door open.”

“Well, then lead on,” Beamer said to her with a sweep of his hand, like a knight addressing a queen, “but we've gotta hurry. Those twins could come back at any time.” Beamer was surprised they weren't home already, but he'd noticed the limousine was not where it was usually parked when he'd checked from the rooftop. He figured they must have gone to a movie or something.

“Yeah . . . right,” Scilla said sarcastically. “And I could probably find it if we'd come in the front door. But from the attic? — haven't got a clue.”

One of those neat pictorial maps like you see in malls would have come in handy — you know, the ones that say, “You are here,” with a map showing where everything else was. They found their way out of the attic and began winding through the hallways.

It would also have been nice if there hadn't been video cameras and infrared sensing devices in every corner. You'd have thought they were in the Smithsonian. Jack came to the rescue again. He brought out an aerosol can and sprayed the camera lenses. He also used it to reveal those red beams from the infrared sensors. Beamer had wondered why Jack had so many pockets.
Maybe street people thought they had to
be ready for every situation
. Eventually they found a hallway that they remembered from before. Scilla took the lead and, after only five wrong turns, finally found Mrs. Drummond's office door down on the first floor.

Unfortunately, the door was locked — no surprise there, of course. Beamer wondered if Jack was going to pull out a skeleton key, but he didn't. He did try to pick the lock, but his breaking-and-entering skills weren't quite up to it.

Scilla suddenly had to go to the bathroom. Actually, she'd been wiggling like a jellyfish for the past ten minutes, which was probably why she'd made so many wrong turns. She tried the room next door and, to her relief, found it to be the bathroom. Meanwhile, Jack returned to trying to pick the lock while Beamer worked on the hinges.

A couple minutes later, Scilla opened the bathroom door and leaned against it with a satisfied grin. “Guess what?” she said. “There's a door from her office into the bathroom . . . and guess what?”

“Enough with the guesses,” grumbled Ghoulie.