CHAPTER 6
Tesla could picture the robo-bug so clearly it was as if step-by-step instructions were floating in the air in front of her.
She assumed that she and Nick could build it, of course. She assumed that they could do anything until life proved otherwise (as it sometimes did).
But Tesla could think of only one kind of motor that would be small enough to run the little robot. And there was only one place in town where they might—might—be able to find one.
Nick knew it, too.
“The Wonder Hut?” he said.
“The Wonder Hut,” said Tesla.
They started back toward Main Street. Silas and DeMarco fell in behind them.
“So you are gonna make your own bugs?” Silas asked.
“We’re going to try,” said Nick.
“Cool!”
Silas thought it over for a moment, then seemed to decide it wasn’t so cool after all.
“Remind me again,” he said. “How is a fake bug gonna get Stupefying #6 back for my dad?”
“One thing at a time, Silas,” Tesla said. “One thing at a time.”
She picked up her pace, as if her friend’s question was something she wanted to leave behind.
When the kids got to the Wonder Hut, they found Duncan, the stocky man who was usually hunched behind the counter reading.
He was leaning against a spinner rack stocked with dollhouse furniture while Curiosity the robot scratched his back.
“Oh, yeah,” he moaned. “That’s the spot.”
He jumped when he noticed he was being watched, fumbling the rover’s remote control so badly that Nick was afraid it was going to fly out of his hands.
Fortunately, Duncan managed to get a grip on the control box before it could hit the floor and burst into a thousand pieces.
“I had a horrible itch,” the man said with a nervous laugh. “Right between my shoulder blades where I couldn’t reach it.”
He scurried around the counter and took up his usual position near the cash register.
“How can I help you today?”
You could go down the street and steal back a comic book for us, Nick thought.
“Did those new parts come in that you were expecting?” he asked.
“What are you looking for?”
“Mini-vibration motors.”
Duncan jerked his chin to the right. “Last aisle, halfway down, on the left. Between the motor-speed adjuster controller drivers and the ultrasonic distance sensors.”
“Thanks,” Nick said.
He started to walk away. But Tesla had already hurried off ahead of him, DeMarco and Silas on her heels. His sister would know what to look for. There was no reason Nick couldn’t linger a moment over something that had caught his eye: Curiosity’s control box. Duncan had left it on the counter.
Without even realizing he was doing it, Nick began reaching out a hand toward it.
“Do you think maybe I could try—?”
“No,” Duncan snapped.
Nick jerked his hand back.
“The controls are extremely delicate and complicated,” Duncan went on. “You’d probably break something.”
“Sorry,” Nick muttered, embarrassed.
Duncan smiled apologetically.
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. Dr. Sakurai keeps telling me I need to work on my customer service skills, and I guess she’s right. It’s just that it takes a steady hand and a lot of experience to get Curiosity to do what you want it to. I’m only beginning to get the hang of it myself.”
Nick glanced down at the control box again. Aside from a small view screen that showed what the robot’s camera was pointed at—a Grow-Your-Own Fungus Farm Starter Kit at the moment—it didn’t look any different from what you’d need to fly a model airplane. And any kid could do that with a little practice, right?
Still, Nick decided not to say so. Duncan was being sorta-kinda nice for once. Why contradict him?
And anyway, something else had caught Nick’s eye. It was on a low shelf behind the counter.
A row of robots.
There were nine of them, all about a foot tall. Eight were generic and clunky—like the angular, lumbering robots from goofy old movies, only with what looked like propellers stuck to their heads.
The ninth was different, though.
“Is that a robot pirate?” Nick asked.
Duncan turned, picked up the little figure Nick had noticed, and placed it on the counter.
It was wearing a buccaneer’s plumed hat and oversized coat and broad, black belt. It even had a peg leg, though instead of being made of wood, it was metal.
Duncan waved a hand in front of its flat, silver face, and its eyes began to glow red.
“Arrrrrr,” the robot said, waving a tiny cutlass it clutched in one of its hands. “Thank ye for setting sail for the Treasure Trove, me hearties!”
“Th-th-the Treasure Trove?” Nick spluttered.
Duncan was gazing admiringly at the robot pirate. He didn’t seem to notice how surprised Nick was.
“Yeah. It’s one of those antiques places up the street,” he said. “Dr. Sakurai’s been giving out toy robots all over town. As a promotional thing. She thinks people will notice them, ask where they came from, and then maybe come in here. That’s what she and your uncle are doing right now, actually. They’re over at the police station dropping off a robot cop.”
“Ou-ou-our uncle?”
It was turning out to be a big day for spluttering.
“Yeah. Ol’ Romeo,” Duncan said. “He came in here with flowers that looked like they’d just been yanked out of somebody’s yard.”
Nick cringed. “They weren’t begonias, were they?”
“I don’t know. I’m not good with flowers.”
“Sort of big and floppy and reddish pink?”
“Yeah. That was them. With roots and clumps of dirt still hanging off the bottom.”
Nick sighed. Their uncle’s neighbor Julie had just planted a fresh bed of begonias.
If Uncle Newt wasn’t careful, the day would come when Julie was planting him in her yard.
Tesla, Silas, and DeMarco appeared beside Nick, and Tesla plonked three small, plastic-coated packages on the counter.
Inside were three mini-vibration motors.
“Cool pirate,” Tesla said to Duncan as he rang up the sale. “Did I hear him say something about the Treasure Trove?”
“Yeah. Dr. Sakurai offered it to the guy who owns the place, but he wouldn’t take it. Said it would ‘disrupt the store’s old-fashioned, down-home charm.’ Or something like that.” Duncan looked at the total on the register. “That’ll be ten dollars and forty-two cents.”
Tesla produced a wad of crumpled bills.
“Nick,” she said, “we need another dollar forty-two.”
“I don’t have a dollar forty-two. I don’t have a penny.”
Tesla shot her brother an irritated glare.
“Hey, when DeMarco got us this morning, it was for an emergency, not a shopping spree,” Nick said. “How would I know we might need…excuse me. What are you doing?”
Duncan had pulled out his wallet and placed two ones on the little pile of bills on the countertop.
“Giving you that dollar forty-two,” he said.
He gathered up the money, put it in the cash register, then gave himself the change.
“That was really nice. Thank you,” said Tesla.
The boys all thanked Duncan, too.
“It’s good to see young people taking an interest in building things,” he said. “It’ll keep you out of trouble.”
I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Nick thought.
Tesla picked up the mini-vibration motors, thanked Duncan again, and led her brother and their friends out of the Wonder Hut.
It was decided that Nick and Tesla would go back to Uncle Newt’s to build robo-bugs while Silas and DeMarco kept an eye on the Treasure Trove.
Actually, it wasn’t so much decided as dictated.
“Why do you always get to tell everybody what to do?” DeMarco asked Tesla, who’d done the dictating.
“Because I’m the one who always knows what to do,” Tesla said. “See you in a couple hours.”
“A couple hours?” DeMarco moaned as Nick and Tesla headed off toward Hero Worship, Incorporated, where they’d left their bikes. “We can’t just stand around for a couple hours. We went nuts with boredom before, and that was barely thirty minutes.”
“Maybe we could get some more frozen yogurt,” Silas suggested.
“We gave Tesla our last three bucks to help pay for those little whatchamacallits, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” Silas said. “We will go nuts.”
Tesla didn’t want to explain to Uncle Newt why they were in the basement building robotic bugs. Fortunately, she didn’t have to.
When the kids got home, Uncle Newt wasn’t there.
“He must still be out with Dr. Sakurai,” Nick said. “Duncan said he came by to bring her flowers this morning.”
“I knew it,” Tesla muttered with a roll of the eyes. “Newt and Hiroko, sittin’ in a tree…”
Nick shivered. He didn’t want to think about his uncle K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
He changed the subject by telling his sister about the robots Dr. Sakurai was giving out around town.
“What a cool lady,” Tesla said. “I just can’t believe she’d quit a job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to come here and sell train sets.” She started down the stairs to the basement laboratory. “Anyway—come on. We’ve gotta get these things built before the Treasure Trove closes.”
“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “I’ve already got a blueprint in my head.”
“Me, too,” said Tesla.
She just hoped their blueprints were the same.
They weren’t.
“LED lights for eyes? Why?” Nick said. “That doesn’t make any sense for a bug.”
“So? Dobek has a bug phobia. An irrational fear. It doesn’t have to make sense. We just need him to have a reaction.”
“But the reaction can’t be, ‘How’d those weird little toys get in here?’ It has to be, ‘AHHHHHHH! Bugs!’ ”
“Without the glowing eyes, he might not even notice the bug at all.”
Nick looked skeptical.
“Of course, maybe the grape jelly would do the trick,” Tesla said, thinking out loud.
“Grape jelly?” said Nick.
“Yeah. So the robot’s dark and kind of shimmery like a roach and leaves a gooey mess behind when someone stomps on it. Maybe the glimmer of it would be enough to catch Dobek’s attention.”
“Don’t you think a bunch of jelly’s going to mess up our wiring?”
“We wouldn’t need a bunch.“
“One drop would be too much!”
“Maybe,” Tesla said. “Maybe not.”
“All right. Fine,” Nick spat. “You can have the glowing eyes…if we lose the jelly.”
“Done.”
They shook on it.
“Now,” Tesla said, “I was thinking we could make the bodies out of cardboard.”
“What? Bottle caps would be a million times better.”
“Bottle caps? Those wouldn’t work at all.”
“Would so!”
“Would not!”
They argued for a while until Tesla suggested they cut the heads of toothbrushes and use those. Nick thought that was brilliant.
Then they started arguing about the legs.
An hour later, Nick and Tesla had three jelly-free robo-bugs with glowing eyes, toothbrush bodies, and wire legs.
They also had twenty minutes to get them to the Treasure Trove before Dobek’s mysterious buyer “Anton” showed up.
“Go, go, go!” Tesla said as she pushed her brother up the basement stairs.
“I’m going, I’m going, I’m going!” said Nick.
“Where, where, where?” said Uncle Newt.
He was dumping the contents of a can of Spaghettios into a huge pot on the stove top.
“Oh, nowhere,” said Tesla. “Where have you been all day?”
Uncle Newt clutched his hands to his chest—apparently forgetting that one of them held an open can. Sludgy red tomato sauce spilled onto his white lab coat.
“Heaven,” he said with a sigh.
Tesla groaned.
“We’ve really gotta go,” said Nick.
“Enjoy nowhere!” Uncle Newt called after them as they bolted out the door. “But be back by five!”
It was already 4:44.
When Nick and Tesla had made their way downtown again, they found Silas and DeMarco still in their stakeout location outside It’s-Froze-Yo!
DeMarco was trying to stand on Silas’s shoulders.
“Stay still,” DeMarco said as he wriggled and writhed on Silas’s back, his hands wrapped around his friend’s forehead.
“I am still,” Silas said.
DeMarco managed to get a foot up on one of Silas’s broad shoulders, but it quickly slid off again.
“I told you this would be easier if I knelt down first,” said Silas.
“But you’d never get up again once I was on your shoulders.”
“Yes, I would.”
“Uhhh…are you guys trying to get a better look into the Treasure Trove?” Nick asked.
“Nope,” said Silas.
“We were just bored,” said DeMarco.
DeMarco let go of Silas’s head and dropped to the ground.
“Well, thanks for staying inconspicuous,” Tesla said.
“You’re welcome,” Silas said with a smile.
DeMarco hadn’t missed the sarcasm, though.
“Hey, you guys were gone for, like, forever,” he said, “and there was nothing to see up there but people wandering around looking at junk.”
Nick and Tesla gazed up at the Treasure Trove. The lights were still on, but no one was in sight.
“Has Anton showed up?” Nick asked.
DeMarco shook his head. “We don’t think so. No one’s gone inside in, like, ten minutes.”
“How much time do we have?” Silas asked.
“Not much,” Nick told him. “Maybe five minutes.”
Silas’s eyes went wide. “What? Well, let’s hurry up, then! If that Anthony guy gets his hands on the comic book before we do—”
“Anton,” Nick corrected.
“We’re not ‘getting our hands on the comic book,’ remember?” Tesla said. “We just want to be sure Dobek has it before we go to Sgt. Feiffer.”
“Yeah, right, whatever.” Silas looked down at the little doohickeys Nick was pulling from his jacket pocket. “Is that them? How’d they turn out?”
“See for yourself,” Tesla said.
She leaned in close to her brother’s cupped hands and connected the wires on the robo-bugs. The little robots began to vibrate, their eyes glowing red.
“Cool!” said Silas.
“They look fakey,” said DeMarco.
“Fakey?” said Tesla.
“I told you the light-up eyes were too much,” said Nick.
“Fakey?” Tesla said again.
DeMarco shrugged. “Sorry. They do. There’s no way Dobek’s going to be fooled by those things. Not for a second.”
“Well, I think he’s gonna freak,” said Silas.
DeMarco shook his head. “He’s not gonna freak.”
“He is gonna freak,” said Silas.
“He’s not gonna freak,” said DeMarco.
“Hey!” Tesla barked. “There’s only one way to find out, right?”
“Right!” said Silas.
He snatched the robo-bugs out of Nick’s hand and took off running.
“What are you doing?” a stunned Nick yelled after him.
Silas was already halfway across the street.
Car tires screeched. A horn honked. But Silas just kept going.
“Come back!” Tesla called out. “We need to discuss the plan!”
Silas reached the steps to the Treasure Trove and started bounding up two at a time.
“Hide!” DeMarco cried. He grabbed Nick and Tesla and dragged them along with him as he ducked behind a nearby trash can. “Dobek’s looking!”
The three kids crouched down and hid. After a few seconds, they risked a look up at the Treasure Trove, DeMarco peeking around one side of the garbage can, Nick around the other, and Tesla peering over the top.
Dobek was still standing at one of his store’s open windows, looking down at the street. He didn’t seem to notice them. Eventually, he turned away and disappeared.
“Now what?” Nick said.
Tesla stood up. “Now we just have to hope that—”
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!“
The kids looked up at the Treasure Trove again.
Dobek was running past the windows waving his hands in the air.
“Ugh! No! Horrible! Nasty! Legs! Eyes! Scurrying! Creepy! Crawly!” he shrieked.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!“
“Well, how about that?” DeMarco said. “He freaked.”
