Free Brainboy and the Deathmaster by Tor Seidler Page B

the treetops, two gigantic birds leaped off a branch and flew right at him, the flapping of their wings deafening in his ears. He jerked the wheel to the left and floored the pedal. The birds whizzed past the pod, barely missing it. Except they weren’t birds at all. They were pterodactyls.
    Darryl guided the pod back out into the middle of the tank. He quickly recovered from the shock of the attack of the winged dinosaurs and steered his little submarine toward a reddish-brown glow that resolved itself into a volcanic crater with a bubbly surface. When a jet of molten plasma spat right at him, Darryl jerked the wheel to the right and sped back to the middle of the tank. But before long a bluish glow lured him down and to the left. A lagoon. As he hovered above it, something gurgled; then a bizarre shape broke the surface: the head of a dinosaur with a breathing hole on a bump on its forehead. This time Darryl didn’t flee.
    The lagoon supported an astonishing variety of lifeforms, ranging in size from dragonflies to bronto-sauruses. In his clear pod Darryl felt as if he was part of the ecosystem, and he got so caught up in every nook and cranny of it that before he knew it, the hour and a half was over and the tank turned dark again, leaving only a ring of red light at the top of the tank. He guided his pod up toward it.
    When the pod plopped back onto the platform, there stood Mr. Masterly. He unsealed the lid and opened it.
    “But I only saw the lagoon!” Darryl cried. “Can I go back and see something else?”
    “You liked it?”
    “It’s fantastic! How in the world does it work?”
    “Well, the tank’s made of a special nondistorting Plexiglas we developed at MasterTech. The exterior’s sprayed with a special material used for rear-projection movie screens. We use six different projectors. Needless to say, it’s a wildly expensive format, but the great thing is, you can see it over and over without getting bored. Or you don’t have to watch the movies at all. Some of the kids like just to ride around and enjoy the light show. We have some kinks to work out with the sound system, but it’s coming along.”
    “I don’t know why I stuck to that lagoon. There was so much to see! Can you run it again?”
    “Once you’re through orientation, you can come back any night after dinner.”
    “Really?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “What’s orientation?”
    “It basically brings you up to speed on the work we’re doing here. That is, if you’re interested in joining us.”
    “The work about … communicating with the dead?”
    “Among other things.”
    “Are there more openings? My friend BJ’s top of his class.”
    “I’m afraid there’s just one at the moment. And if you take it, I’m also afraid you’ll have to cut off ties to those you knew. As I said, we’re top secret.”
    Darryl thought of BJ and his mother. But they seemed as distant as the Vulpecula galaxy.
    “I suppose you could have one more go,” Mr. Masterly said. “Pop into this pod over here. It’s charged up, with a full air supply.”
    Darryl hopped eagerly into another pod. “Thanks!” he said, scrunching down so Mr. Masterly could seal him in.

14
    “C ops!” Ronnie Johnson cried.
    As a squad car nosed into the parking lot, kids scattered in all directions. Big T sprinted up Cedar Street, but BJ headed in the exact opposite direction: due west, across the glinting railroad tracks. A siren wailed. But BJ had Big T’s number-two board, and once he was sailing along in the shade of the Alaska Way Viaduct, the wailing at his back diminished. It seemed only fair that the police weren’t chasing
him.
He’d felt a twinge of envy watching Big T pry the silver jaguar off the hood of that car, but he’d just stood around with his hands in his pockets, an innocent spectator.
    At the aquarium BJ hopped off the board and hoofed it back across the tracks to the public elevator to the Pike Place Market. Up in the market the Korean guy at