Once again, Samantha and Nipper stood in front of the mailbox with their pug at their feet.
Samantha carefully opened and closed the metal flap three times and the steel chamber rose from the ground on cue. As soon as it locked into place, Sam, Nipper, and Dennis stepped inside and headed down the secret staircase.
They paused in the center of the dark room. Sam and Nipper both put on their sunglasses.
“Show ’em what you can do, old pal,” said Samantha. This time, she did a fairly good impression of her father.
“Wruf!” said Dennis.
The X-27B switched on, bathing the room in bright white light.
For the first time, they got a true look at the magtrain station.
The floor was a colorful mosaic of tiles that formed a map of the world. A different type of stone had been used for each country. Germany was slate. Brazil was turquoise. India was rose quartz. There were hundreds of colors and textures.
Art deco columns stood between the portals to the magtrain tunnels. Stained-glass rings covered each pillar from top to bottom, reflecting the light up to the ceiling.
Just a few feet above the kids’ heads, the chamber ceiling extended into a shallow dome that looked like it was made of white marble. Hundreds of shiny golden objects dangled from the dome, glittering as they slowly turned. They were small sculptures: a bird, a flower, a fruit, a statue, a famous landmark.
Samantha and her brother stood and stared. They looked up, down, and all around, taking everything in.
“There is so much to do,” Samantha said softly.
She reached up and touched a golden model of the Lincoln Memorial. Through the columns, she could see Abraham Lincoln.
“There are so many places to go,” she added.
“Look!” Nipper shouted, snapping Samantha out of her thoughts. He was pointing at the archways surrounding them. “We can see all the writing now.”
With the room lit so brightly, smaller words were visible beneath the large carved letters.
DYNAMITE
Have a blast in the Pacific Northwest
PARIS
City of Light
BARABOO
Town of clowns
DUCK
North Carolina is coming at you
ZZYZX
California’s spelling-bee favorite
EDFU
Phun for pharaohs
WAGGA WAGGA
Planes, trains, and kangaroos
WAHOO
Nebraska loves you
EXIT
To the Emerald City
Samantha pointed up at the word Edfu with the umbrella and waved the metal tip under the small writing.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s have some phun.”
They both took one more moment to marvel at the magnificent chamber around them and then marched into the tunnel labeled “Edfu.”
They took their familiar places in the magtrain car and Dennis hopped onto Samantha’s lap. Thirty-three minutes later, they stood in a new station, studying the Plans by the light of the X-27B.
After exiting the magtrain, Samantha, Nipper, and Dennis had followed a ramp from the train tracks up into a small square room. A ladder that led up to a hole in the ceiling was attached to one wall. An enormous falcon was painted on another wall. It stood at attention and wore a tall cylindrical hat.
“I recognize that bird. It’s the Egyptian god Honus,” said Nipper. “Uncle Paul told us about him.”
“You’re close,” said Samantha. “That’s the god Horus.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure I remember the name Honus.”
“He was on your baseball card. Don’t you remember?” Samantha asked.
Nipper didn’t answer, though, because he was already climbing the ladder. Samantha popped open the umbrella quickly.
“Wait,” she called. “I’ll find us a secret hidden exit.”
Nipper stopped climbing. “Uh, ladder?” he said, pointing to the opening directly above him. “Come on,” he said, and kept going. He pushed open a round hatch above him, and light spilled down from the world outside.
“Close the umbrella and bring the dog,” he added, and disappeared through the hole.
Samantha shrugged. “That works, too,” she said.
She stood there for a moment, thinking about all the things, secret or obvious, that weren’t on the umbrella. She closed the Plans and slung them over her shoulder, tucked Dennis under one arm, and started climbing. It was a tricky maneuver, scaling the ladder with a pug under her arm, so she climbed carefully. Finally, she got to the hole in the ceiling and stopped. Nipper stood outside, waiting. She passed Dennis up to her brother and quickly joined him.
They were standing on the head of an enormous stone bird statue exactly like the one in the picture. They were just tall enough that their own heads poked out of the bird’s hat.
“Crow’s nest,” said Nipper.
Falcon’s nest, Samantha thought, but she didn’t bother to say it out loud.
Dennis barked and switched off the light in his collar.
They were perched above a sun-drenched courtyard surrounded by ancient ruins. They faced a massive stone structure. It was almost a hundred feet high, with walls that sloped so that the whole building looked like a giant upside-down W. It was covered with carvings of Egyptian men and women and animal-headed gods.
A shorter building, about half as high, stood behind them. It had round columns that fanned out at the top like stone palm trees. A steady stream of visitors came and went through a metal gate behind the columns.
“Let’s go there,” said Samantha, pointing to the gate.
They waited until there was no one in sight. Then they climbed out of the hat and slid down the back of the falcon’s neck, over its body, and down its stone tail feathers.
“Are you sure that’s where we need to go?” asked Nipper, following closely behind Samantha and Dennis.
“I’m not,” she said.
“Are you even sure we’re supposed to be here in Edfu?” he asked. “Maybe those letters on the wall were just a coincidence.”
Samantha recognized that sound. It was the sound of her brother getting impatient. She adjusted the umbrella over her shoulder as she walked faster, passing between the columns and through the gate.
Glass walls enclosed a lobby to the museum beyond. Several signs on metal bases lined the way to a wide pair of glass doors. Each sign welcomed visitors in a different language. Samantha recognized Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and several others.
She pointed to the English-language sign.
OUR NEW EXHIBIT
DISCOVERIES FROM THE PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY
DON’T MISS OPENING DAY!
“I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” she said.
Nipper nodded in agreement.
They removed their sunglasses and pushed one of the doors open. Dennis padded happily behind.
As soon as they entered the lobby, a woman in a uniform stepped in front of them. She held up one hand and pointed to the dog with the other.
Samantha picked up Dennis and cradled him like a baby. Then she looked up at the guard with a hopeful smile.
“Min fadlik?” Samantha asked in perfect Arabic.
The guard look surprised, then nodded, with a wide approving grin.
“You said ‘please’ so nicely, young American lady,” she said. “I do not see a small dog with a sparkling collar.” She waved them in.
“See?” Samantha told Nipper quietly. “If you’re nice, it opens doors for you.”
“Sure,” Nipper replied, even quieter. “But it doesn’t get your Yankees back.”
They entered the large room. Hundreds of ancient artifacts were on display around them. A sacred boat appeared next to a chair on long poles that servants had used to carry Egyptian nobles from place to place. Fragments of statues rested on pedestals in a dozen locations.
At the center of the exhibit, a long sheet of woven fabric with gold braid trim dangled inside a glass case. The fabric was painted in black, green, and bright orange.
A museum guide beckoned. “Come closer,” he said. “This is our most recent find, and we are very excited about it.”
The Spinners approached the man as he gestured toward the exhibit.
“This fantastically preserved artifact was discovered pinned to a wall inside the Temple of Horus,” he told them. “Nobody knows how it got there.”
He paused and looked at each of them for dramatic effect.
“Archaeologists are still trying to determine the age of this fantastic object,” he continued. “It may be only a few years old, or it may be several thousands of years old.”
He pointed to a small round detail in the bottom corner and lowered his voice to a soft whisper. “Our only clue is down here. This mysterious symbol looks a lot like English letters,” he said. “Don’t you agree?”
“What was that last part?” asked Nipper, beginning to feel very nervous.
Samantha leaned in to examine the tiny mark. It was a big letter S surrounding the letters F and C.
“Up here,” the guide announced enthusiastically, “these four illustrations tell the story called ‘The Traveler and the Monkey King.’ ”
Colorful drawings featured animals, gods, and several familiar-looking Egyptian symbols. The central figures in all four pictures were a human-sized monkey wearing a black robe and a man in a gold vest. Only, instead of the white skirt of ancient Egyptian dress, the man wore green plaid pants that looked a lot like pajamas.
And his shoes were, unmistakably, orange flip-flops.
Samantha smiled.
It was Uncle Paul.