I walked slowly back to campus, thinking it through. It was clearer now than ever that Dad had meant for us to look for King Triton’s Lair, to succeed where he had failed.
And he must have known that somehow, we’d figure out how to get there and devise a way to explore the ocean floor.
I looked up to find the long, low workshop, tucked up against the side of the mountain, steam from who knows what sorts of machines pouring from various chimneys and pipes sticking up all over the roof.
Quincy had been the Engineering instructor ever since she graduated from the Academy. She was a gifted engineer and could take credit for many of the most impressive inventions of the new modern age: SteamOutboard motors, ultra-efficient Steam bicycles used in cities, SteamWashers, SteamPonies. . . . the list went on and on. Whenever you walked by the workshop, day or night, you could hear clanging and whooshing and all kinds of strange noises. Quincy taught all of the engineering, field repair, and gadget-design classes inside the workshop, but most of us were only allowed to work on one side of the building. The other side was for the top-secret projects that Quincy worked on with her best students, like M.K. The Bureau mostly left her alone, but that was only because they needed her inventions.
Quincy looked up and smiled when she saw me. “Mr. West!” she called out. She had been at the Academy with Dad and claimed that he’d taught her everything she knew about gadgetry and engineering. She said it with a twinkle in her eye that made me think it was the other way around, but it was clear she’d loved Dad, and by extension, she loved us. When we’d first arrived at the Academy, she’d asked if she could take a look at our vests. She’d even tuned up a few things for us. Our parachutes needed a thorough cleaning before being replaced in their hidden compartments, she’d replaced Zander’s flamethrower, and she said she’d be happy to add some new gadgets once we knew where we were going for our exam expedition.
“You looking for your sister?” she asked me. I nodded, and she led me to the rear of the workshop, where I could see M.K. at a long workbench, tightening something with her wrench.
“Hey, there,” she called out, grinning. “Come check this out.”
I watched as she tightened the bolt on a small metal utility box. When she was done, she stepped back and held it up, then pressed a button on the side. A metal spear shot out of the box, trailed by a length of long wire.
“M.K.!” It had come within inches of piercing my upper arm.
“Sorry. In case you need to go spearfishing,” she said, handing it over. “Put it in your vest. I’m making some more for the rest of us.”
“Thanks,” I said, tucking it into a pocket and looking around the workbench. “Whoa. Are those what I think they are?”
At the other end of the bench were four brass-and-Gryluminum diving helmets shaped like fishbowls, with glass panels in front. Tubes and wires connected them to four diving suits, each made of a blue synthetic material that shimmered in the light. The suits had small Gryluminum tanks attached to their backs—oxygen tanks, I assumed. I leaned over to inspect the gadgets decorating the front of the suits and saw a light like the one on my vest, a removable speargun, an underwater compass protected by a thick bubble of glass, and a couple of zippered pockets.
“Quincy and I based the design on the suits that Dad took on his expedition, but I completely redesigned them so they’d be lightweight and allow the diver to stay down longer,” M.K. said, showing me the breathing apparatus inside the helmet.
“So this is your big surprise, huh? Pretty cool.” I picked up the helmet and put it on. The room fell into complete silence as I looked out through the glass and watched M.K.’s lips move. “What did you say?” I asked her, taking off the helmet. “I said that’s not the surprise. Those are just for backup.”
“What do you mean, ‘backup’?”
M.K. looked up at Quincy. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s okay. You’re almost done, right?”
“Yeah, I’m getting close now,” M.K. said. “Okay. Come on.” She put down the wrench, pushing her too-long bangs out of her eyes and led me through a set of doors to a big room at the back of the workshop. In the room’s center was a large swimming pool.
Floating in the middle of the pool was M.K.’s surprise.
“Here she is,” M.K. said with pride. “Her name is Amphitrite.” She grinned. “The Greek goddess of the sea, mother of King Triton. But I call her Amy.”
Bobbing on the surface of the water was a huge brass-and-chrome octopus, its egg-shaped head made of shiny steel with a rounded plate of glass riveted to the top, forming a sort of windshield. Eight metal arms attached to the chrome body, which appeared to hold the cockpit and the machine’s engine.
“She’s a submersible,” M.K. told me. “Specially designed for exploring”—she lowered her voice—“the floor of the ocean.” Looking through the glass window, I could see four seats inside the pod, as well as a wall of controls and dials and gauges.
M.K. watched my face. I sometimes forgot she got nervous just like everyone else. “What do you think?” she said, blinking quickly. “There’s an airlock, so we can dive right out of her. And I included a pressure-adjusting seal to make it safer . . .”
“I’m pretty much speechless,” I said. And I was.
Quincy put an arm around M.K.’s shoulders. “She designed it herself. It holds four people, and the sealed SteamEngine keeps you under for up to six hours. She’s come up with an incredibly innovative technology that addresses the problem of the steam combustion engine taking up all the oxygen in the submersible. I’m amazed at how quickly she’s pulled it together. There’s a lot of fine-tuning still to do, but she’s the finest engineer I’ve ever come across.”
“That’s what Dad always said.”
“He was right. I haven’t told anybody just how really, truly good she is. They’d start making plans for her in about two seconds, have her making bombs or something. I told her not to talk too much about this, but word gets around. Maggie came to look at it yesterday. Mountmorris will know about it soon enough. Word on the street is that they’re building some kind of submersible themselves. The next frontier, and all that. Tell him about the arms, M.K.”
M.K. gestured to the submersible’s various arms. “Okay, well, they each have different tools: two different drills, pincers that can collect objects from the ocean floor, a hose, a light, a speargun, a jackhammer, and another supersecret one.” She gave me a wicked grin. “I’ll let that one be a surprise. It’s all controlled from the cockpit. Here, come in and take a look.”
She hauled the submersible over to the side of the pool with a rope and pressed a button on the head. The hatch door flipped up so we could step inside, then closed again, sealing us off from the water. The interior was small but cozy, with four comfortable seats in a semicircle around the perimeter. With a smile I recognized the pattern on the seats’ cushions: M.K. had upholstered them with the red flowery sheets that Raleigh had bought her just before we’d left for school. She didn’t like anything with flowers on it.
“Don’t tell Raleigh,” she said with a wink.
“What do all those levers and buttons and things do?” I pointed to the dashboard, and she launched into a monologue about adjusting pressure and conserving energy and buoyancy, then pressed one of the buttons. An engine started, and the submersible sank below the surface of the water. Using the levers, M.K. and I explored the floor of the pool. She showed me how the pincers and the other attachments worked.
“I went and looked up all those other expeditions you were talking about. The thing is, they didn’t have the right equipment,” she said. “A few of them had small submarines, and others had diving helmets that allowed them to go down for an hour or two. But no one had anything like Amy.”
I sat back in my seat, running a hand over the smooth wood of the dashboard. “It’s great, M.K.”
She searched my eyes, looking older than her eleven years. “Are you still mad at Zander?”
“I don’t know. Not really. I’m just . . . worried. We have to get them to send us there. It’s going to take an incredible amount of luck for it to all work out.”
“Well, remember what Dad always said about luck.”
I did remember. Dad had always hated it when people wished him good luck on his expeditions. He would tell us, “You make your own luck. You don’t wait for it to come to you. You create luck by making connections. By putting things together. It only looks like luck on the other side.”
“We’ll get there,” M.K. said as we gazed across the floor of the pool. Midday sunlight streamed through the water, which rippled on the turquoise tiles on the pool’s edge. “One way or another, we will.”