Children of the Moon. Evadeen Brickwood

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СКАЧАТЬ veranda and the path to the golf course after dinner and before dark. Much to Holly’s and Natasha’s delight: oh yes, the scholarship-boy had been put in his place.

      “Hey, Huxley! Were you sleepwalking or did you meet someone special on the golf course?” Natasha guffawed and winked at Chryséis.

      A few fifth-graders skulked close by, grinning broadly. A rare scandal!

      Natasha was a carbon copy of Holly Benson. Although her hair was lighter than Holly’s, it was permed into identical ringlets. She shook her curls and even talked like Holly.

      Chryséis was fuming. Well, you just wait she thought hotly and shot furious looks at the girl. You just wait.

      General attention shifted away from Trevor’s misdeed when two other boys threw a baseball through one of the kitchen windows that afternoon. They were sentenced to cleaning the swimming pool for a week. It was Matron’s favorite punishment for rowdy kids.

      At last, they could discuss Trevor’s adventure. Everything had ground to a halt after Natasha had ratted him out to Matron. They had to be careful, though. Holly was capable of sabotaging everything, if she found out about the nightly experiment.

      “And you are sure you saw scales?”

      They sat in the common room on the second floor, keeping an eye on the door. Everybody else was still downstairs in the dining room. Chryséis demanded to hear the story for the umpteenth time, although it made her spine feel all chilly in delicious horror.

      “I’m not sure. It was so dark. Could have been feathers or something.” Trevor felt tired. The more he thought about it, the less he could remember. Maybe it had all just been a dream. But he still remembered turning round and round inside the vortex. No dream then.

      “Sounds like a dinosaur to me.” There, Katherine had said what the others were thinking.

      “Maybe.”

      “That must have been a long trip then,” Chryséis marvelled.

      “I’m not sure. I just pressed the button and jumped in, before the vortex could disappear again.” Trevor yawned. What was the big deal?

      “Without choosing the time span?”

      “Yes, without choosing the time span.”

      “We have to change that.”

      “Yes.”

      “And you say it was hot and smelled dreadful?”

      Katherine couldn’t let it go. If time travel was like that, she would stay behind for sure. Dinosaurs - just imagine!

      “Katie, I don’t know for sure. It took only a minute. Just drop it now.” But his fellow scientists weren’t ready to just drop the issue just yet.

      “Hey, we missed dessert for this!” Chryséis protested.

      “What happens if we travel into prehistory and meet face to face with a dinosaur or… a caveman?”

      Better tackle the facts. “Or we land right in the middle of an ocean or in a volcano.”

      “What?” Katherine jumped.

      She was busy eating a chocolate bar and played with the wrapper. It helped her calm her nerves.

      “We don’t have to go that far back. In any case, there are books about prehistory. And a cartful of DVDs.”

      Trevor perked up. “If it’s supposed to be a bomb, we must at least go back a few thousand years. Otherwise, it’s too boring. Let’s do some research, guys. Will you stop it with that stupid paper already?!“

      Katherine put the wrapper into her pocket.

      “We program reference points in time. Not just the starting time.” Trevor looked at the clock on the wall. “Sorry, gotta go. Walt’s waiting with the broom for me.” With that he hurried downstairs.

      “We have to be careful. I’m sure that Holly’s already watching us like a hawk.” Chryséis pulled a face as if she had just bitten into a lemon.

      “Or she has Natasha already spy on us.”

      “What are we supposed to do, sit around?” Katherine asked.

      A group of fourth-graders walked into the room with their homework. They paid no attention to the older girls and soon studied their Japanese vocabulary.

      “No, of course not. While Trevor sweeps, we’ll visit our good, old library. Let’s start with oceans and volcanoes,” Chryséis whispered. They went to the library and took out a few DVDs to watch them later, then climbed the stairs to their room on the second floor to drop them off.

      “Let’s take a walk to the pond,” Chryséis suggested. “At least we can be sure that we won’t see Holly there. She hates water. “

      On the water’s edge, the two friends sat down and took their trainers off. “Dinosaurs are creeping me out.” Katherine shook herself.

      “I don’t know, never seen a live one,” Chryséis said. “I’m not sure if it makes any sense, but, why not check it out…well, why not…”

      “What? Check what out?”

      “Well, something to make us invisible.”

      “Right, invisible -” Katherine contemplated. “There’s a thought. Wait, I think I read about that somewhere in a magazine.”

      “What magazine?”

      “I remember... it was in the ‘Science Today’, December issue. Some inventor in Kansas came up with a clever idea. Bending light waves. Nobody takes it seriously, of course, but why not try it out?”

      “It’s definitely safer to go invisible when we need to…” Chryséis said. “Just in case some caveman wants to cook us for breakfast. Or some humongous dinosaur thinks we are too close to its nest...”

      “Oh yes, don’t wanna end up as caveman cereal. You got some imagination.”

      “I’m serious, Chris,” Katherine said and felt gooseflesh on her arms. Chryséis stopped laughing.

      “So am I. A virtual invisibility cape it is. I’ll have a look at that issue of ‘Science Today’ magazine. Won’t take me long.”

      They wiped their feet dry on the longish grass, picked up their shoes and walked barefoot back to the school building.

      During the next few days, the three friends made good progress. They did research, and the idea with the ‘virtual invisibility cape’ had been quickly carried out. Chryséis offered to play the guinea pig. They just had to make sure that everyone else was on the back veranda for the afternoon snack. The ideal time for such an experiment.

      “Calm down, you’ll give us away with all that fidgeting,” Chryséis said to Katherine. “Just now, Holly Benson will sniff us out!”

      For Chryséis, СКАЧАТЬ