Free Brainboy and the Deathmaster by Tor Seidler Page A
Authors: Tor Seidler
nodded his head, which had the same sort of scar on the forehead as Snoodles’s. After giving Darryl’s arm a squeeze, Abs grinned even more broadly, as if to say that there was plenty of room for improvement there. Then he led them onto a gleaming hardwood basketball court, where he picked up a loose basketball and swished it from forty feet. In the gymnastics area Abs performed flawless routines on the rings and the parallel bars and the pommel horse, never breaking a sweat, and on the tennis court he jumped the net to shake hands with an invisible opponent. In the cardiovascular center he demonstrated the treadmills and stair climbers and rowing machines, and in the strength-training center he ran through the state-of-the-art muscle-building machines. He didn’t jump into the sparkling Olympic-sized swimming pool or the whirlpool bath beside it, but in the track-and-field area he ran a sprint and heaved a discus and threw a javelin the entire length of the field.
Leaving the gym, the three of them passed under anarchway with the word AquaFilm pulsing over it in aquamarine neon. Looming before them was a white ball, over fifty feet in diameter. Above it, suspended from the ceiling, was a platform reached by a two-way escalator rising up like one of those conveyor belts for carrying grain up into grain silos.
“What is that thing?” Darryl asked, eyeing the huge ball.
“Come see,” Mr. Masterly said.
Normally Darryl wouldn’t have stepped onto the narrow escalator for the world, but now he calmly rode all the way up to the platform with Abs and Mr. Masterly. On the platform a dozen clear-plastic containers were grouped like the petals of a flower around a central hole. They looked like big eggs, or small blimps, each about six feet long and three feet high, each with a foot pedal in front, a seat and steering wheel in the middle, what looked like a scuba diver’s tank in the rear, and rotors and rudders mounted on the tails. Mr. Masterly unplugged the front egg—they all seemed to be charging—and lifted the lid on its top.
“Hop in,” he said.
“What are they, sir?” Darryl asked.
“I call them movie pods.”
“Movie pods?”
They were a bit reminiscent of the Space Needle’selevators, and normally Darryl wouldn’t have gotten near one. But normally he would have been a wreck just being up on that dizzying platform.
Abs deposited Darryl into a pod as if he weighed nothing.
“The pedal controls rotor speed,” Mr. Masterly said, fastening Darryl’s seat belt. “The whole thing lasts about ninety minutes. When it’s over, just steer back up to the top. If I’m not here, Abs will be. Have fun!”
Before Darryl could ask
what
lasted ninety minutes, Mr. Masterly closed and sealed the pod’s lid. The pod slid forward and tilted down and plopped through the hole into the top of the huge sphere. Suddenly everything was darker than BJ’s basement room at night—and for a second Darryl actually pictured BJ. But BJ seemed far, far away, the inhabitant of another world, and the thought of him slipped away like a space eel.
Though Darryl was all alone, locked in a clear egg that seemed to be slowly sinking in the darkness, he felt surprisingly calm. He experimented with the steering wheel and the pedal. By pressing the pedal, he increased the rotor speed, and the pod seemed to rise. Easing off the pedal decreased rotor speed, and the pod sank.
It dawned on him that the huge round ball was actually a tank of water, and for a moment, as glimmers of color began to dart by his see-through submarine, hethought they were tropical fish. But in fact they were just flickers of light. The flickers grew brighter; off to his right the water took on a brilliant green glow. Intrigued, Darryl turned the wheel that way and pressed the pedal halfway down. As he approached the glow, it came into focus, becoming a primeval forest full of trees even more exotic than the monkey puzzle in his old backyard. As he neared
Leaving the gym, the three of them passed under anarchway with the word AquaFilm pulsing over it in aquamarine neon. Looming before them was a white ball, over fifty feet in diameter. Above it, suspended from the ceiling, was a platform reached by a two-way escalator rising up like one of those conveyor belts for carrying grain up into grain silos.
“What is that thing?” Darryl asked, eyeing the huge ball.
“Come see,” Mr. Masterly said.
Normally Darryl wouldn’t have stepped onto the narrow escalator for the world, but now he calmly rode all the way up to the platform with Abs and Mr. Masterly. On the platform a dozen clear-plastic containers were grouped like the petals of a flower around a central hole. They looked like big eggs, or small blimps, each about six feet long and three feet high, each with a foot pedal in front, a seat and steering wheel in the middle, what looked like a scuba diver’s tank in the rear, and rotors and rudders mounted on the tails. Mr. Masterly unplugged the front egg—they all seemed to be charging—and lifted the lid on its top.
“Hop in,” he said.
“What are they, sir?” Darryl asked.
“I call them movie pods.”
“Movie pods?”
They were a bit reminiscent of the Space Needle’selevators, and normally Darryl wouldn’t have gotten near one. But normally he would have been a wreck just being up on that dizzying platform.
Abs deposited Darryl into a pod as if he weighed nothing.
“The pedal controls rotor speed,” Mr. Masterly said, fastening Darryl’s seat belt. “The whole thing lasts about ninety minutes. When it’s over, just steer back up to the top. If I’m not here, Abs will be. Have fun!”
Before Darryl could ask
what
lasted ninety minutes, Mr. Masterly closed and sealed the pod’s lid. The pod slid forward and tilted down and plopped through the hole into the top of the huge sphere. Suddenly everything was darker than BJ’s basement room at night—and for a second Darryl actually pictured BJ. But BJ seemed far, far away, the inhabitant of another world, and the thought of him slipped away like a space eel.
Though Darryl was all alone, locked in a clear egg that seemed to be slowly sinking in the darkness, he felt surprisingly calm. He experimented with the steering wheel and the pedal. By pressing the pedal, he increased the rotor speed, and the pod seemed to rise. Easing off the pedal decreased rotor speed, and the pod sank.
It dawned on him that the huge round ball was actually a tank of water, and for a moment, as glimmers of color began to dart by his see-through submarine, hethought they were tropical fish. But in fact they were just flickers of light. The flickers grew brighter; off to his right the water took on a brilliant green glow. Intrigued, Darryl turned the wheel that way and pressed the pedal halfway down. As he approached the glow, it came into focus, becoming a primeval forest full of trees even more exotic than the monkey puzzle in his old backyard. As he neared