After breakfast the next morning, Astrid called her mother, who was already at work by the time the girl inventor had gotten up.

“Mom, I’m going to Los Angeles after the board meeting, Friday.”

“Astrid, you’re fifteen. You can’t take off on a five hundred mile trip without permission and without adult supervision.”

“I’ll take Miss Scacchi with me.”

“I suppose that’s all right. How long do you plan to be in California?”

“Probably just a day,” replied the girl inventor. “Océane wants to meet me there. She said she needs my help, but she didn’t give me any details.”

“Well, I know that Miss Scacchi will keep me informed of any pertinent information.”

Astrid found the family’s personal assistant willing to make the trip.

“I have to be back by Monday though,” she said. “I have several events that I’m working on for your father.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” replied Astrid. “We’ll leave tomorrow, right after the board meeting—say ten o’clock.”

Chef Pierce made Astrid a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. Since both her parents were at work, she took her food into the family room and ate while watching the financial news.

“Maxxim Industries stock is up three and three quarters, as the market anticipates the seven to one stock split set to occur at the close of trading tomorrow. This as the company is projecting record sales on the back of their transportation division, which includes the amazing Maxxim Hoverbike.”

“Hey, genius!”

Astrid looked up to see four of her friends entering from the hallway to the living room. The one who had spoken was Denise Brown. She had been Astrid’s friend since they toddlers. She was five foot six and a little on the skinny side, with long blond hair and green eyes. Next to her was Valerie Diaz, who had been a close friend for almost as long. A couple of inches shorter than Denise, she had luxurious black hair and flashing brown eyes. And right next to Valerie was a robot version of her. Robot Valerie was the result of one of Astrid’s experiments a year before. She had a metallic blue polycarbonate skin and long blue hair, but was otherwise very similar to Regular Valerie. The fourth arrival was Austin Tretower, who had joined Astrid and her friends when he had moved to Maxxim City as a freshman. His brown hair, once in a buzz cut had grown out over the summer and a recent growth spurt had added a few inches to his height.

“Hey guys!” said Astrid, hopping up. “Hey Austin. Hanging out with the girls now?”

“Um, no,” he replied. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“We just bumped into him on your front step,” said Robot Valerie, her tone and her body language indicating that she thought this was an extremely fortunate turn of events.

“We came hang out,” said Denise. “I don’t know what he’s doing here.”

“Um, Astrid,” said Austin. “Can I talk to you in private?”

“He has a secret project he needs help with,” confided Robot Valerie.

“Sure. Let’s into the living room,” said Astrid, taking him by the elbow. “Why don’t you girls load up Minecraft while I’m gone?”

“So what’s this about a secret project?” she asked him when they were alone.

“I’ve designed a game,” he said. “It’s going to be an app for phones and tablets. But I need somebody to do the coding for me. Do you think you can do it?”

“What’s your idea, Austin?”

“It’s all about these princesses that battle each other. They get stronger and cooler as they gain experience.”

“I suppose these princesses will be scantily clad.”

“Well at first, but then they get this cool armor—they’re still super hot though.”

“Hmm,” said Astrid. “I’m really too busy, between my work on the Board of Directors and my experiments.”

“You don’t like my idea, do you?”

“I’ll be honest with you, Austin. It all sounds a little sexist, but I suppose boys might download it—cause, you know… boys.”

“But it’s a game for girls,” he said, somewhat deflated.

“I really am too busy, anyway,” continued Astrid. “Why don’t you see if Christopher can do it for you? He’s at least as good a coder as I am.”

“All right, I guess,” said Austin. “I’ll see you later.”

Astrid felt a little bit bad as he walked toward the front door, his shoulders slumping, but she really was too busy, especially with her surprise trip to meet Océane Feuillée.

She went back to the family room and joined the girls in a game of extensive game of Minecraft. Later, Astrid and Denise talked while the two Valeries played Ms. Pacman.

That evening, Astrid and Toby went to the movies. The Cinema was a small theater, originally built in 1937 in a town in Kansas. It had later been moved to Maxxim City and rebuilt. Because it had only had one screen and seats for only 122 movie viewers, the Cinema seldom showed the newest movies. It was almost always the classics like An American in Paris.  Astrid thought the movie was just as good as Toby had indicated. When he dropped her off at her door, he kissed her on the corner of her mouth.

The space plane lurched violently. At first, flames were the only things that could be seen through the thick windows. Minutes later though, the flames dissipated, revealing blue skies.

“Transferring control to manual,” said Astrid. “How does it feel?”

“Pretty sluggish,” replied Toby. “Is it always like this?”

“At this point, yes. It’s a lot like flying a brick until we’re ready to throttle up.”

Astrid Maxxim was a startlingly cute girl of fifteen. Her shoulder-length strawberry blond hair set off her very large blue eyes. She sat in the copilot seat of the Constellation, the newest of her hypersonic space planes, as it blasted its way back into the Earth’s atmosphere. Toby Bundersmith occupied the pilot’s seat. Though it was difficult to tell in his spacesuit, he was tall and muscular. His brown hair hung down in bangs just above his hazel eyes. He turned and gave Astrid a nervous smile. While he was a skilled pilot, this shakedown flight was his first trip to space. Astrid, in addition to being a world-famous inventor, was already a veteran of three previous orbital flights.

“Descending to ten miles altitude,” she said. “Prepare to throttle up.”

“Ready.”

“Throttle up to sixty percent power.”

“Roger,” replied Toby, pushing the thrust control forward.

“Houston, this is Constellation,” said Astrid into her microphone.

There were a few seconds of static before a reply came through her headphones.

“Constellation, Houston. Welcome home.”

“Thank you. Now that we’re safely back in the atmosphere, we’ll bid you farewell and switch over to Maxxim Tower.”

“Roger, Constellation. Happy landing.”

“We’re passing over Southern California,” said Toby. “It’ll be a few minutes before we’re ready to ask for a landing clearance.”

“That’s a fact,” said Astrid, as she unfastened and then removed her helmet. “Do you want some help with your helmet?”

“No, I’m going to leave it on,” he said. And then a few seconds later, “No, I want to take it off. As soon as you said something, my nose started itching like no tomorrow.”

Astrid helped him remove it, stowing it, along with hers, in the appropriate compartment. Toby immediately scratched his nose with a gloved hand, before returning all his attention to the controls.

“I pointed out that we had a few minutes,” said Toby, “to highlight the fact that we have a bit of time to talk.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

“My cousins are coming to town next week and I thought maybe you could help me plan some activities for them.”

“Event planning is not really my field of expertise,” said Astrid, with an arched brow. “Are you just asking me because I’m a girl?”

“No!” Toby exclaimed. “Absolutely not. I was asking… What I really should have asked… It would really be cool if they could take a flight into space.”

“I’m sure it would be cool for them,” said Astrid. “They’d probably think you were the best cousin ever. I’m afraid it can’t happen though. You remember all the training you’ve gone through, and even our passengers have six weeks of rigorous training before they fly on one of the space planes.”

“Yeah,” said Toby. “I guess I already knew the answer to that. I’m just getting worried that they’ll be bored. They live in Berlin and I live in a little town in the Southwestern U.S.”

“Maybe Jürgen and Sabine aren’t looking for a wild time. It seems to me that most Europeans visiting the states enjoy the great natural wonders we have here. Take a trip up to the Grand Canyon. Fly over to Mesa Verde and show them the Ancient Pueblo ruins.”

“I’m sure that would be great for Jürgen,” he said. “I’m worried about Sabine. She is really into the German nightlife. Maxxim City is going to seem really tame.”

“Well, if you have to, you can always fly them to L.A. You can take them to a disco and visit Disneyland on the same trip.”

“Well, that sounds pretty good. Does that mean I have free access to a Maxxim Industries plane?”

“A Starcraft 170 and all the fuel you can use.”

“I guess it pays to have a girlfriend who is the CEO of a major multinational corporation.”

“I’m just the co-CEO, said Astrid, “and are we saying the B and G words?”

“What? Boyfriend and girlfriend? I’m saying it. I say it all the time. My girlfriend Astrid. Astrid, my girlfriend.”

Just then the space plane lurched.

“Pay attention to the controls, boyfriend,” said Astrid, climbing back into her seat.”

“I am. It was just a pocket of turbulence.”

“Maxxim Tower, Constellation,” said Astrid into her microphone. “Requesting a landing vector.”

“If I crashed us,” said Toby, “I’d be grounded for a month.”

“Only a month?” asked Astrid with a grin.

The next morning after breakfast, Eleanor and Penelope left for Tahiti in the speedboat, leaving Astrid, Océane, and Adeline on Dolphin Island. After helping clean up the kitchen, the girl inventor turned on her computer system and checked everything over.

“Adeline,” she called into the other room. “I don’t suppose you have a connection to the Internet, do you?”

“As a matter of fact we do,” the young woman replied, stepping past Astrid to point to a spot on the wall. “They laid an underwater cable from Papeete a long time ago. I think back in the eighties. I hope it still works.”

“More like the nineties,” said Astrid, sitting down in front of the outlet, and pulling out her pocket toolkit. “This is a CAT-3 connection. I’m going to need to convert it. I’ll just strip an end off one of these cables I brought and we can see if the connection still works.”

A few minutes later, Astrid had a wire running from the wall to the back of the Ion desktop computer. After she ran the setup routine, the Maxxim Industries web page appeared on the screen.

“This will work. We’re limited to 100 megabits, but that’s not too bad really. When you said it was made in the eighties, I thought it might have been a 1200 baud connection.”

“I know most of those English words,” said Adeline, “but I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s okay. Why don’t you show me your data?”

Adeline had recorded 2,164 sounds on a digital recorder. Each recording corresponded to an entry in a notebook that described the likely meaning. The job would require that all the sounds be copied to the computer and then to the data from the notebook would be typed in. Afterwards, a database would have to be written that included both.

“Well, I’d better get started.”

“I can help,” said Océane. “I am a very good typist. I can input everything from the notebook, while you create the program.”

“Great,” said Astrid. “Why don’t we take two of the portable computers and do it while we sit on the beach? I hope you have sunscreen.”

Océane did have sunscreen and they helped each other cover all their exposed skin. Océane had a black one-piece swimsuit, but Astrid wore shorts and a yellow top, not having thought to pack a suit. Adeline followed them down and set up a large beach umbrella, under which the two teen girls sat with their computers.

It was a lovely day and the only sounds were of the surf crashing onto the sand, and an occasional squawk of a seabird. It seemed like very little time had passed, when Adeline arrived back on the beach with a wicker picnic basket.

“Eleanor and Penelope should be back soon,” she said, as she passed out plates and then scooped potato salad onto them.

“Good,” said Astrid. “I really want to meet your dolphins.”

“Well, we really don’t need the boat for that. Most afternoons, they swim right around the island. I flatter myself that they come to visit me, but in reality they hunt over the reef and sun themselves in the lagoon. Have some cheese.”

“How come all the French people I know are thin,” said Astrid, taking a slice of Camembert, “and you all eat so much cheese and bread.”

“Obviously it isn’t bread or cheese that makes a person fat,” said Océane.

“You Americans don’t take time for your food,” said Adeline. “You are in too much of a hurry. It’s not healthy.”

“I agree with you there,” replied Astrid. “My mother is a perfect example. She’s busy all the time. Although, now that I think about it, both times I’ve talked to her recently, she’s been relaxed and at home.”

“Maybe she’s decided to start taking it easy.”

“Maybe, but that somehow doesn’t sound likely.”

“Have some dried fruits,” said Adeline, passing out an assortment of dates, apricots and roasted nuts. “Would you like some wine?”

She handed glasses out and then pulled out a bottle.

“Um, I’m too young to drink.”

“I only drink wine,” said Océane. “My father didn’t let me even drink it until I was twelve.”

“In France, everyone drinks wine. It is good for you.”

“This is that peer pressure everyone keeps telling me about,” said Astrid.

“I don’t want to pressure you, Astrid,” said Océane. “You can drink water.”

“Thank you. I’ll go and get it myself.”

The girl inventor got up and walked up to the house. As soon as she stepped inside, the phone ringer on her Carpé watch began to sound.

“Hello?”

“Astrid?”

“Hi, Toby,” said Astrid, a grin breaking out on her face. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on with me,” he said. “What’s this I hear about you being in Tahiti?”

“Um, well, I flew down to help a friend of Océane’s with some research.”