CHAPTER 10

Restricted

After checking the back hallway for noise and hearing nothing unusual, the kids headed outside to the Big Lawn. It was a beautiful day, and it seemed like a good place to have lunch and stare at the sky, waiting for inspiration — at least that’s what Clementine thought.

“So many terrific clouds today,” she said, lying on her back and staring up at the sky and the back of the Air and Space Museum. It was all concrete and glass, very sleek and modern, and built into the side of the hill.

“That one looks like a sleeping lion,” Clementine continued, not bothering to point. “And that one looks like a steamship.”

“I don’t see it,” said Wilson, who was lying next to her. He usually didn’t see it.

“Oh! And there’s a cup of tea!” Clementine exclaimed. “It’s even steaming.”

“What?” Wilson said, staring straight up. “I don’t see that.”

“You’re looking the wrong way, silly,” Clementine said. She was up on her elbows looking at the back of the museum.

Then Wilson saw it too — twenty yards or so from the back of the museum, near the edge of the winding path that crossed the Big Lawn and connected the four museums, billowed a column of thick steam. It looked like a cloud coming right out of the ground.

Wilson hopped up and ran to it. It came from the vent next to the path. “Amal!” he shouted. She and Raining were throwing a foam football back and forth close-by. “What is this?”

Amal glanced over. “I don’t know,” she said. “A steam vent?”

“But from where?” Wilson asked as Raining joined him beside the vent. “The museum doesn’t have a basement, does it?”

Amal shook her head and joined the boys at the steam column. “No,” she said, “but it’s set into the hill. This would be the very back of the first floor.”

“In other words,” Clementine said, getting to her feet and grinning, “it would be just about where the noise is coming from.”

Amal’s mouth dropped open. The foam football dropped to the grass. She ran to Clementine and threw her arms around her. “You’re right!” she said. “Wherever this steam is coming from is where the noise is coming from!”

“How did you figure that out so quickly?” Wilson said.

Clementine wrinkled her nose at him. “It’s obvious,” she said. “You just don’t have a good sense of space. I get it from painting and sculpting and drawing.”

Raining, meanwhile, had wandered off along the winding path. He’d found other vents, some with steam and some without. Suddenly he spotted something he’d seen a hundred times or more but never really thought about. “Guys!” he called across the Big Lawn. “What’s in there?”

Amal looked over. Raining pointed down at a big metal garage door painted in yellow-and-black stripes and built right into the side of the hill itself.

Together, the four kids ran down to the check the door. A sign across the top said RESTRICTED — NO ENTRY WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION. Next to the door was a key card reader — which all the museums used for offices and restricted areas.

Amal read the sign next to the reader out loud: “Level Double-A Security Clearance Required. Whoa.”

“Whoa what?” Clementine asked.

“That’s some serious security clearance,” Amal said. “My dad doesn’t even have that.”

“Mine either,” said Raining.

“Neither does my mom,” Wilson said, shaking his head.

“So who does?” Clementine asked.

Amal shrugged. “The president, maybe?” She pulled out her phone and dialed. “Dad? It’s me. Hey, what’s in the weird garage built into the hill under the Big Lawn? Uh-huh … no reason … okay, thanks, Dad. See you later.”

“Well?” Raining said.

“He said it’s really special stuff for all the museums,” Amal said. “Real ship parts, working rockets, shipments of fossils before they reach the Natural History Museum … that kind of stuff. But he’s never been in there. Apparently only the delivery people and major big shots, like people from NASA, ever go in.”

“Then it’s someone from NASA banging down there?” Wilson said. “I wonder what they could be doing.”

Amal frowned. She was starting to think the noises behind the wall weren’t a mystery at all.