Free Wade and the Scorpion's Claw by Tony Abbott Page B

dish.

    â€œIt looks like a Christmas ornament,” said Lily.
    â€œIsn’t it an armillary sphere?” I asked.
    Tricia blinked. “It is! How did you know?”
    â€œWade’s a geekologist at the University of Texas,” said Darrell.
    Actually, we all knew what it was. Copernicus’s astrolabe had elements of a giant armillary sphere. There was a sketch of it in the diary, and we’d seen plenty of spheres at a museum on a hillside in Rome.
    â€œWell, back when very few people knew how to read,” Tricia continued, “images, drawings, and symbols were used to represent people or governments, rather than words.”
    â€œLike stained-glass windows for people who couldn’t read Latin,” Darrell said. “My mom taught me all about them.”
    Tricia nodded. “Absolutely. This armillary sphere is an image we’ve seen before in Ming work. It’s not Chinese, but a Portuguese symbol representing King Manuel the First, who ruled Portugal from 1495 to 1521.”
    Becca glanced at me. Exactly the right time.
    â€œThe spice box was created in China. There’s no doubt about that,” Tricia went on. “From these marks I’d guess it was crafted in Beijing for either King Manuel or for a well-to-do Portuguese trader. Why it was lined in lead, I have no idea, but that seems original, too. Also, the little dish floating below the sphere could be the symbol of a specific merchant, but I’d have to do more research to track that down. This is so exciting! Now the text.”
    While Becca, Lily, and I went back to our computer and studied the images of the box, Darrell paced behind us. “We can’t let on too much,” he said, raising his eyes at the curator and keeping his voice low, “but here’s what I think. Sometime in the past sixty years, a recent Guardian wrote the message in the spice box, then took out the tile to keep the box from being opened without it.”
    Lily’s grin told us she liked the way that sounded. “But it wasn’t just a spice box, was it? You wouldn’t line it with lead if it only carried cinnamon. I’m thinking the relic used to be in here.”
    â€œLead keeps Superman safe from Kryptonite,” Darrell said, which seemed random, but it got me thinking.
    â€œI wonder if you-know-who knew that in the 1500s.”
    â€œUnlikely,” said Darrell. “The first Superman comic was in 1938.”
    I gave him a fake smile. “Not Superman. I mean if Copernicus knew that lead could protect you. When did people discover that?”
    A hundred questions. No answers. Yet.
    â€œKids . . .” Tricia called us over. Everyone but Becca hurried to the other end of the table to see what she’d come up with. Becca leaned over the Copernicus diary, hiding it and reading intently, but gripping her arm tight, as if it was hurting all of a sudden. Lily shot me a worried look.
    â€œThe very first word of the text is on a line by itself, like a title,” Tricia began, pointing to a series of three characters that looked like this:. “It took me all this time to figure out because it’s actually rendered backward, like a mirror image. Very strange. But once you reverse it, it’s easily read as the Chinese character for the constellation Scorpio, which follows the scorpion design on the lid. Also, the lines below, though not backward, are a poem. I’ll keep working.”
    At the other end of the table, Becca had her notebook out next to the newspaper-covered diary and was carefully unfolding the page that contained the Trithemius cipher.
    â€œWhat did you find?” Darrell whispered to her.
    â€œRemember how I showed you the line beginning one of the coded sections?” she asked. “‘Bfe cyhylk bf wuxzz ifgb oiud and so on?”
    â€œIfgabood. I remember,” said Darrell.
    â€œWell, if this letter square is the way to decode it, maybe the