The Hawaiian waters were crystal clear and even at a hundred feet below the surface visibility was excellent. Astrid looked down at the undersea dome, suspended on massive cables from the ship above, as she dove her mini-sub in a sweeping downward spiral. She noticed a shadow passing her just as the radio popped to life.

“Astrid!” called Toby. “Look up.”

The girl inventor leaned forward and looked up through the Plexiglas canopy of the mini-sub, to see the massive form of a humpback whale swimming above her. The great beast paused for a moment and rolled over onto its side as though giving the strange man-made devices a good once-over, and then with a kick of its great tale, it swam away.

“That makes you feel tiny, doesn’t it?” said Toby.

“It sure does. I didn’t expect to see any humpbacks. Their season is just about done.”

They continued descending until both mini-subs reached the bottom edges of the dome, which thanks to preplaced guide wires, now rested snuggly in place on its foundation. Astrid flipped on the external spotlight, even though at this depth it was still just light enough to see. Using the manipulator arms, she withdrew a large nut from a container on the foundation and threaded it onto a massive bolt sticking up from the concrete through a hole in the dome’s titanium frame. She did this twice more and then maneuvered to the next attachment point. Toby did the same thing, starting on the far side of the dome, and between them they connected all twelve points.

“This thing is huge,” said Toby over the radio.

“It does look pretty giant down here, at least from the outside. I’m wondering how big it’s going to seem from the inside.”

“All right. Shall we go on up?”

“Let’s.”

They began spiraling upward, their propellers leaving a double helix of bubbles in their wake. Halfway to the surface, a shadow passed overhead, and Astrid looked up expecting to see their humpback whale once again. It wasn’t the whale though. It was another submarine. This craft was not a huge vessel like a US Navy sub, but it wasn’t a small one man sub like Astrid’s either. It was about fifty feet long, longer than the humpback, but not quite as big around. It was painted flat black, making it difficult for anyone on the surface to see it. Suddenly as she watched, the unknown submarine tilted its bow down.

“What is that guy doing?” she said aloud.

“What was that, Astrid?” called Toby.

“Toby! Look out!”

She realized what the strange submarine was doing, but it was too late to do anything about it. The dark vessel’s turn had sent it on a collision course with Toby’s mini-sub. Astrid could hear the loud crunch as the nose of the black undersea boat smashed into the little yellow vehicle. The mini-sub flipped over as a huge cloud of bubbles burst from it and shot toward the surface.

On a massive dockside platform just outside of the Marine Air Station, several large trucks were being unloaded. Cranes lifted heavily wrapped pallets out over the water. Here the great base portion of the undersea dome floated with the aid of giant inflatable pods. Dozens of workmen on the floating base, unpacked triangular panes of transparent Astridium, fitting them together like a huge jigsaw puzzle. Others constructed an internal frame that would hold the three floors in place. Paige Liebowitz carefully oversaw the operation.

“Is everything going okay?” asked Astrid, running up to her.

“Everything is on schedule,” the wavy-haired woman replied. “We should have the floors constructed this morning and the dome assembled by this afternoon. Then tomorrow we can float it out to the site. The foundation has already been laid using hydraulic cement just north of the reef at a depth of 175 feet. So we just sink it down and bolt it in place. While that’s going on, the workmen here can assemble the Astridium elevator.”

“It’s going to have an elevator?” asked Mr. Diaz, from behind Astrid.

“Sure,” she said, turning around. “That way people can go back and forth from the surface without having to scuba dive. It also serves as an airlock, since the dome will be kept at a pressure of one atmosphere inside.”

“I thought it was going to be down deeper,” said Mr. Brown.

“The Astridium can withstand the pressure up to a depth of 300 feet,” explained Astrid. “I chose 175 feet for two reasons, one being safely. This is a test after all. Plus, I want the people in the dome to be able to see without a lot of external lighting. At 300 feet, it gets pretty dark.”

“We have a construction ship coming on site tomorrow. It has cables to guide the dome down, and a crane to lower the elevator shaft,” explained Paige. “We’ll attach it to the dome and then pump out the water.”

“What’s in all those crates?” Mr. Diaz asked, pointing to a truck just pulling up.

“Equipment for inside and furniture,” replied Astrid.

“And that is my cue,” said Mr. Brown. “I’ve got to make sure that my chairs and lounges are set up properly.”

“Martin and I are going to roll up our sleeves and do some manual labor,” said Mr. Harris, as he and Toby’s father joined the workmen assembling the dome.

“Sound like fun,” said Dr. Maxxim.

Over the next several hours, Astrid watched as her dome slowly took shape, rising first to form a ring and then growing up until it became a geodesic dome—a half sphere fifty feet tall and one hundred feet in diameter. She moved from spot to spot around the dome, checking the Astridium panes and double-checking the fastenings. The three scientist/engineers who had taken on jobs as workmen had a great time, but Astrid was sure that they had actually increased the construction time by at least an hour. Mr. Brown however had successfully loaded all the furniture and equipment on board, and had overseen the installation of all the vital mechanisms.

“I’m starving,” said Dr. Maxxim, exiting out of the open emergency airlock along with Mr. Harris and Mr. Bundersmith, all three of them looking exhausted and happy.

Mr. Diaz, who had been working with a liaison from the Marine Corps all morning, guided them toward the van.

“I’m told there’s a pizza shop right around the corner,” he said.

“Pizza doesn’t sound very Hawaiian,” said Mr. Harris.

“Hawaiian Pizza,” replied Mr. Diaz.

The music thumped so loudly as they walked into Epicenter, that Astrid thought she could feel her internal organs bouncing around. The vast nightclub was filled with hundreds of teen-aged boys and girls, bouncing up and down to the throbbing beat. Strobe lights inside mimicked the spotlights outside. A few small tables and chairs sat around the perimeter of the dancers and a vast bar stretched across the back of the room, right below a metal catwalk which was just as full of twisting teens as was the dance floor.

“Come on!” shouted Penelope over the din. “Let’s dance.”

She grabbed Astrid’s hand and pulled her along through the gyrating crowd to the center of the club. Turning to face her niece, she threw her arms over her head and tossed her black hair, dancing in perfect time with the now louder-than-ever music. Astrid copied her as best she could.

“I don’t usually dance with girls!” Astrid shouted to make herself heard.

“What?” shouted back Penelope.

“You’re a great dancer!”

“What?”

Astrid gave up trying to communicate and waited until the space between songs to talk. There was no space between songs though. The throbbing beat continued on right into a different track—this one the girl inventor recognized from her own MX-360 favorites list. She kept dancing and by the end of the second song, began to feel well-exercised. Though the thumping baseline continued, the next song was slightly less loud.

“I don’t usually dance with girls!” Astrid repeated.

She was loud enough this time that several other dancers around her laughed.

“I’m just chumming the waters,” said Penelope. “Look around. You have plenty of boys waiting to dance with you.”

The young inventor glanced around and sure enough, there were half a dozen boys forming a circle around her.

“How do I pick one to dance with?” she asked, but Penelope was already moving away through the crowd. A tall, dark-haired boy took her place as another song thrummed into existence. Without a word, he started dancing. Astrid followed along.

She couldn’t have said how long she had been dancing, but after seven or eight dance partners, Astrid was exhausted and dripping with perspiration. She waved off a disappointed-looking and rather short boy with blond hair and started through the crowd toward the bar. The counter was two or three patrons thick all along its extent. Apparently a lot of others had the same idea that she did. Reaching forward, she waved for one of the servers.

“Here, have a drink,” said a voice right beside her.

Astrid turned and found herself nose to nose with one of the boys she had danced with. He was handsome and about sixteen years old, with brown hair and green eyes. He pushed a tall glass with a red straw toward her.

“No thanks.”

“They don’t serve alcohol here,” he said. “All the drinks are just soda.”

“I don’t know you though,” said Astrid. “I don’t take drinks from anyone I don’t know.”

“Sorry,” she called to him, as he turned with a frown and melted into the crowd.

“Astrid,” said Valerie, shyly. “Have you thought about what you can do to take care of Valerie’s problem?”

“I thought you were Valerie,” said Penelope. “I’ve been calling you Valerie for years now.”

“I am Valerie. I meant Robot Valerie.”

“Oh yes,” said Penelope. “I still can’t believe your robot, Astrid. It looks so realistic.”

“She’s not exactly my robot,” said Astrid.

“And I’m not an ‘it’,” said Robot Valerie.

“Sorry,” said Penelope. “What is the problem that Valerie… I mean the other Valerie was talking about?”

“Let’s go back to my room, and I’ll show you,” said Astrid.

Penelope and the two Valeries followed the girl inventor inside and down the hallway to her bedroom. Denise trailed them, carrying her plate of crepes. Once in her room, Astrid pulled out a dome-shaped shiny steel object.

“Here is your scalp,” she told Robot Valerie. “We’ll attach it after we remove your hair unit.”

“I’ll be bald!” gasped Valerie.

“That’s not what Valerie wanted at all, Astrid,” said Regular Valerie.

“No, don’t worry,” said Astrid. “We’ll put hair on it once we have it installed. I just haven’t decided what to make the hair out of yet. We could use wire or fiber-optic cable, I suppose.”

“Why don’t you just wear a wig?” Penelope asked the robot girl.

“We tried a few wigs,” replied Valerie’s flesh and blood twin. “They just didn’t look right with her metallic skin.”

“Wait right here,” said the young woman, stepping out of the room.

Astrid, the two Valeries, and Denise looked back and forth at one another. A moment later Astrid’s aunt was back, carrying a metallic blue wig.

“Here you go.”

“How come you have a blue wig?” wondered Astrid, cocking an eyebrow.

“I like to wear it when I go out dancing. It’s a good one—real synthetic hair.”

“Can you fix it for me now, Astrid?” asked Valerie.

The young inventor retrieved her pocket toolkit from her suitcase and removed a dozen tiny screws that held the solid hair-shaped molded scalp to Valerie’s head, replacing them once she had fitted on the new scalp piece. Then she used Maxxim Wonder Glue to fasten the wig to the metal. Penelope and Valerie carefully styled the new wig once it was in place, and minutes later, Robot Valerie was smiling at her image in the mirror.

“I look like Katy Perry!” she exclaimed happily.

“At least you look like you stole Katy Perry’s hair,” said Denise.

Denise was lying face down on a chaise lounge, her long blonde hair draped from her head all the way through the slats in the chair down onto the ground. As Astrid approached, she saw that a bottle of sun block was lying on the pavement beside her.

“Did you use that sun block?” asked Astrid.

“I couldn’t reach my own back, could I?” asked Denise, without looking up.

The girl inventor sat down beside her friend and began applying the lotion to Denise’s back. Looking around, she saw that the tiny cloud had moved on and the sun was shining warmly. A gentle breeze was just enough to ruffle the many flowers without moving the trees. When Astrid was done, Denise sat up and returned the favor by applying sun block to Astrid’s fair skin.

“Where are they going?” asked Denise, nodding her head toward the path that led down to the beach.

Astrid turned to see Toby, Christopher, and Austin heading toward the ocean, carrying snorkels and fins. Austin already had his facemask on.

“They’re taking Austin snorkeling.”

“You don’t suppose he’ll drown, do you?”

“Not as long as Toby and Christopher are there,” replied Astrid. She didn’t need to ask Denise who she thought might be the drowning victim. Disaster had a way of seeking out Austin. “Speaking of Christopher, what’s going on with you two?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the two of you went to the Spring Fling together. Has he asked you to the Junior Prom?”

“Not yet,” replied Denise. “I don’t know if he’s going to ask and I don’t know if I want him to.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“Well of course I like him. But we’re such good friends that when we think about being anything more than friends, it just gets weird.”

“Come on,” said Astrid. “Let’s try out this pool.”

The pool was roughly oval in shape, with a table and umbrella built into one end. A person could swim right up to the table and have a seat without even getting out of the water. Astrid entered the water, doing a perfect jack knife off the diving board at the other end. Denise followed with a one and a half forward flip. They swam laps for a while and then pretended they were synchronized swimmers, before getting back out and drying off in the sun.

“Astrid! Denise!”

Neither girl needed to look to recognize the owner of the voice, but they did look up just in time to see Valerie and her robot twin bouncing toward them. Following behind them were Valerie’s parents and Astrid’s mom and dad, and behind them—Astrid’s aunt Penelope.

“Look who we picked up in Denver,” said Mrs. Maxxim.

Penelope Maxxim could have been Astrid’s sister rather than her aunt, since only eight years and two inches separated the two of them. They shared a great family resemblance, with similar large, expressive eyes and cute button noses, but Penelope’s jet-black hair was a contrast to Astrid’s strawberry blond.

“Surprise!” said Penelope, as Astrid hopped up to give her a wet hug.

Before she could make any further protests, Christopher and Denise pulled Astrid quickly onto the bus. The vehicle made a single stop at a gate guarded by military police and then it was out onto the Queen Liliuokalani Freeway. From there it was a remarkably short trip across the island to Kailua. Less than an hour after arriving in Hawaii, Astrid and the others stepped off the bus in front of the palatial beachfront property owned by Maxxim Industries.

The estate had been created years before when Mrs. Maxxim had purchased seven properties and combined them. The original houses, which had been in bad repair, had been removed and five lovely multi-level modern homes had been built, interspersed with gardens and common areas.

“Where’s the swimming pool?” asked Denise as soon as she stepped out of the bus.

“We’re a hundred yards away from the most beautiful beach in the world,” said her brother, “and you want a swimming pool?”

“I don’t swim in the ocean with Astrid anymore.”

“There are three swimming pools,” said Astrid. “You can swim in all three of them.”

“After we get settled,” interjected Mr. Brown. “Do you know where we’re staying, Astrid?”

“Hold on,” replied the girl inventor, pulling out her tablet and flipping her fingers across the screen. “My mom gave me the arrangements. You and Denise are staying at Orchid House, and Dennis too of course. The Harrises are at Plumeria House. The Diazes are at Antherium House. And Toby and Mr. Bundersmith are at Chrysanthemum House.”

“What about me?” asked Austin.

“Oh, um… you’re with Toby and his dad. And I’ll be at Gardenia House.”

Carrying their luggage with them, the travelers from Maxxim City split up and headed in small groups toward each of the assigned houses. Astrid all alone, walked down the sidewalk and up the steps to the front door of Gardenia House, pulling her suitcase along on its wheels. It was a medium-sized home, far smaller than the Maxxim Mansion, but quite striking. A central portion rose up into two stories plus a loft, while wings on either side were a single level. The gently sloping roof and the coral façade fit perfectly with the tropical plants that filled carefully arranged flowerbeds all around the perimeter. The front door accepted Astrid’s thumbprint and she stepped inside.

Walking through the foyer and into the kitchen, Astrid opened the refrigerator to find an apple, which she washed in the sink before taking a bite. The interior of the house was beautifully furnished and spotlessly kept; not surprising since it was used only a few weeks a year. Opening the patio door, the fourteen year-old breathed in the floral scent that floated on the gentle breeze. She could hear the ocean waves crashing against the nearby beach with an irregular rhythm.

Astrid sat down in one of the heavy wooden patio chairs as the breeze whipped up slightly around her. It was pleasantly warm and neither the small cloud that moved over her head, nor the scattered drops that fell from it detracted the feeling that the entire island was giving her one big hug. She finished her apple and walked back inside, dropping the core in the recycle bin before taking her suitcase to the bedroom she had used when she had stayed in the house the previous summer. She had just started unpacking when she received a text.

“Already at the pool,” said Denise’s text, pointing at her name.

“How’s the water?” typed Astrid.

“Not in water. Laying out… duh.”

Astrid texted back. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

She had barely finished typing when another text arrived, this one from Valerie.

“We’re here! See you in an hour.”

“Wonderful.”

Astrid sat her phone, her tablet, and her MX-360 on the nightstand and then quickly unpacked her suitcase, placing her clothes in the dresser drawers. The exception was her pink and yellow swimsuit. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to lay out by the pool, she told herself, so much as she needed to keep an eye on Denise to see that she properly protected her skin. Decked out in her bikini and her matching flip-flops, she skipped out the bedroom door and into the hallway to come face to face with two strange men.

The rest of the week was far less eventful than Monday had been and as far as Astrid was concerned, uneventful was a good thing. As the weekend approached though, she began to worry about missing so much school. She would not only miss class that Friday, but the entire next week as well. After school Thursday, she arrived at the monorail station, her arms full of books to find her friends waiting for her. Though they too had their assignments for the next week, only Christopher was as weighted down as she was.

“Why do you have so many books?” Denise asked Astrid. “The rest of us have tons of work for the next week, but I happen to know that you’ve already done next week’s assignments.”

“I have,” she said. “But what about the other work?”

“What other work?”

“You don’t just do what’s assigned, do you?” wondered the girl inventor. “You do the other problems in the textbooks too, right? And you read the books mentioned in the references, right?”

Christopher nodded but the others shook their heads in bewilderment. Once they boarded the train, Toby sat down next to her.

“My dad is working late, and he told me that your parents were too.”

“That’s right,” agreed Astrid.

“Do you want to come over for dinner?”

“This isn’t a date either, right?”

“Of course not,” said Toby, rather too quickly for Astrid’s taste. “Aunt Gerta is going to be there. She’s making schweinebraten.”

“What is that?” Astrid asked.

“It’s like um… a pork roast.”

“I should have guessed that,” she reasoned. “It’s schweine, like swine.”

“Yeah, German is kind of cool like that,” said Toby. “So, will you come over?”

“Sure.”

The monorail took them all to Maxxim City, where the gang said goodbye to Austin and began their walk home. After bidding the Valeries, and then Christopher and Denise goodnight, Astrid and Toby finally arrived at the point where their two yards met.

“What time should I come over?” she asked him.

“You can come over now,” he replied. “We can swim before we eat.”

“All right. First I have to drop all my books at home and get my swimsuit. Why don’t we meet there in twenty minutes?”

“Deal,” said Toby, before turning and heading toward his house.

Astrid walked across the lawn and pressed her thumb onto the pad to unlock the front door. Before she could enter, she heard the gentle hum of a hoverbike behind her. Turning around, she saw her cousin Gloria dropping from the sky to land on the lawn.

“Hello nerd,” said Gloria. “I just wanted to show you my new hoverbike. It’s so much nicer than yours, don’t you think?”

Astrid examined the vehicle. It was one of the sleek models, like Toby’s, only this one was purple with a black stripe.

“It’s very nice,” she said.

“I think it’s great that our company makes such cool things,” said Gloria. “I don’t see why you and your little friends get to get them before I do though.”

“Um, Gloria,” said Astrid. “I got the first hoverbike because I invented it.”

The next morning, the stranger was all that Astrid could think about, at least until she and her friends arrived at Rachel Carson High School on the monorail. The school was abuzz, but not about any strange man arrested by police. Instead, everyone was talking about the lake monster. Boys drew pictures of various marine reptiles on the backs of their notebooks. Girls recounted how strange Pearl Lake had seemed last summer when they went swimming. And every conversation seemed to revolve around Austin Tretower. Some of the teachers even got into the act. Dr. Ikeda decorated the science hallway with a gigantic Elasmosaurus mural, and Mr. Hall assigned essays on the Loch Ness Monster in English Composition.

“I want an alternate assignment,” said Astrid, raising her hand.

“What?” said a startled Mr. Hall.

“I don’t want to write about something as silly as the Loch Ness Monster.”

Astrid could feel Denise and Christopher, on either side of her, staring.

“You’re not limited in the way that you approach the assignment, Astrid,” said Mr. Hall. “You have written more than enough persuasive essays. Perhaps you’d like to do something more creative—a fictional story, perhaps?”

“No, Mr. Hall, I don’t think I would like that at all.”

“What’s going on?” whispered Christopher.

Denise shrugged, and then made a crazy circle with her finger next to her head.

“Then Astrid,” continued the teacher, “if you insist on sticking to your routine, why don’t you write a paper explaining why you believe the Loch Ness Monster does not exist? Might I recommend the book by Steuart Campbell…?”

“I read it when I was five,” said Astrid. “Right after I figured out that there was no Santa Claus.”

“Wait a second,” said Madison Laurel from the far side of the room. “You mean Santa Claus isn’t real?”

“Oh no,” said Denise. “Santa Claus is totally real.”

The class erupted into laughter, and Mr. Hall, with difficulty, brought them back on task.

“Your parents may expect a call this evening,” he told Astrid.

Astrid didn’t enjoy her next three classes as much as usual, but at least the talk of monsters was limited to the students. As they left US History on their way to lunch, Christopher pulled her aside.

“What’s going on with you, Astrid?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re awfully testy today,” he said. “Everybody has an off day now and then… I mean everybody but you. I’ve never seen you have an off day, and I’ve never seen you short with a teacher before.”

“There’s a lot going on, I guess,” said Astrid. “And this lake monster talk is really annoying. You know there’s no such thing as a lake monster. We’ve gone swimming in Pearl Lake a hundred times.”

“I know,” said Christopher.

“Plesiosaurs like Elasmosaurus died out 65 million years ago.”

“Sixty five point two million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous,” confirmed Christopher.

“Loch Ness is less than 10,000 years old, and Pearl Lake is only about a thousand years old. There’s no way there could be a prehistoric monster in either of them.”

“Of course not,” said Christopher. “Kids just like monsters, Astrid. It’s like all those zombie movies or that vampire that the girl’s like. I don’t know why you’re letting it get under your skin.”

“People shouldn’t believe ridiculous things,” she said. “Pretty soon they’ll think the world is flat and Neil Armstrong didn’t land on the moon.”

“I don’t think many people really do believe there’s a monster in Pearl Lake. They’re just having a little fun making themselves scared. It’s like riding the Screaming Pterodactyl at Joyland. It’s just a little thrill to shake things up. Not everyone has spies, sharks, and air-to-air missiles to spice up their lives.”

“All right, I see what you mean,” said Astrid. “But it really wasn’t much of a shark.”

Astrid spent most of Sunday at the Vehicles Facility near the Maxxim Airfield. She had collected several small underwater craft that would be used in the undersea dome’s construction. As soon as she had signed off on them, they were loaded aboard a Maxxim Super-transport 97C. The 97C was a craft that Dr. Maxxim had designed years earlier for the US Space Program, but the contract had been lost to a competitor. It was a jet more than 140 feet long, with a wingspan wider than its length. What marked the aircraft as unusual was its vastly oversized body, looking far too fat to ever get off the ground. Its cargo bay was 25 feet wide and 25 feet tall and 110 feet long. Though never put into production, several prototypes had been built and now the massive plane would ferry Astrid’s dome and all of the construction equipment to the fiftieth state.

“That’s just shy of twenty-five tons,” she said, checking off the last of the cargo.

“Room to spare,” said pilot Carl Williams.

“Yes, it’s a big plane.”

“And one of the few your boyfriend isn’t qualified on yet.”

“Toby’s not my boyfriend,” said Astrid. “At least, not officially.”

“What makes it official?”

“I don’t know…” she said to herself, as the pilot walked away.

Now thinking of Toby, she pulled out her phone and texted him. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Christopher’s, playing air hockey. Do you want to come over?”

She smiled, seeing the comma and question mark in his text. Leave it to Toby to remember how much she appreciated punctuation.

“No. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Astrid took the monorail back to town and walked home alone. The end of the afternoon and beginning of evening brought out long shadows from the many trees lining the streets. Deep in thought, imagining life in an undersea dome as the future Dr. Astrid Bundersmith, she paid little attention to her surroundings, until something caught her eye. A man in casual clothes was sitting on one of the city’s many sidewalk benches, this one at the corner ahead and just across the street from her. He had an open newspaper in his lap. There were several things odd with the picture. First, the man wore dark sunglasses even though he was in the shade, and was supposedly trying to read. Secondly, the local newspaper, The Maxxim City Gazette, was only delivered electronically. While it wasn’t unheard of for someone to have a paper from a nearby metropolitan area, it wasn’t common. There was something else though. There was an unwholesomeness about the man, as if he simply didn’t fit in Astrid’s world.

The girl inventor pulled out her phone and fired off another text to Toby. “Still at Christopher’s?”

“Just leaving. What’s up?”

“I’m near Acacia and Fifth. There’s a weird guy.”

“goto vals b rit ther” Toby’s correct spelling and punctuation flew out the digital window.

“Don’t you think racing is a waste of time?” asked Robot Valerie. “These hoverbikes are all new and have the same internal workings. Won’t the winner just be the person who is lightest?”

“Yay, I win,” said Denise.

“Racing isn’t just about top speed,” said Austin. “It’s about skill and strategy and knowing when to accelerate and how to move into a turn. Didn’t you guys ever watch Cars? Besides, it’ll be fun.”

“Where do you want to race?” asked Christopher.

“Let’s race around that island,” replied Austin.

Two hundred yards from shore was a small island, little more than a bit of rock sticking up just above the surface, to which clung a bit of soil and a few weeds, along with a single yucca plant. It was so small that a single individual would have been hard-pressed to find a spot to sit down.

“You want to race over the water?” asked Denise.

“Sure, it’s better than racing around this desert,” he replied. “If we fall, we get wet. If we fell anywhere else, we’d be covered in cactus needles.”

“Valerie can’t race over the water,” said Denise. “What if she fell in?”

“She’d get wet,” said Austin.

“I mean Robot Valerie. She’s made of metal. She might rust.”

“I’m mostly plastic,” said Robot Valerie, defensively. “I still can’t race over the water though.”

“No you can’t,” said Astrid. “I’m surprised at you, Austin. That’s like asking you to fly over a pit of lava.”

The boy stuck out his lip and frowned. “I didn’t… I don’t want her to get hurt. It’s only I wanted to race.”

“Why don’t you three boys race,” said Astrid.

Christopher rolled his eyes, but then nodded and he and Toby walked to their hoverbikes and put on their helmets. Austin, anxious to get started before anyone had a chance to change his mind, was at the shoreline waiting for them. The four girls walked down to the lake’s edge to watch.

“All right,” said Toby. “Once around the island and back to this point. First one to cross the edge of the shore wins. Put your helmet on, Austin.”

The three boys lined up and got ready. Astrid held up her hand.

“Ready… steady… go!”

The three hoverbikes took off across the lake. Austin’s blue bike took the lead, skimming just feet from the water, leaving a path in the waves beneath him. Even from the shoreline, it was obvious that he was pushing the bike near its 40 mph top speed. Christopher was racing nearly as fast, though his green hoverbike was flying about twenty feet higher.

“Toby’s losing,” said Regular Valerie.

“He’s just letting Austin win,” said Astrid.

Austin, now firmly in the lead, leaned right and made the turn around the little island. He had just finished the maneuver, when suddenly something reached out of the water and hit the bottom of his bike. The sleek blue hoverbike flipped over end on end, tossing the boy into the lake.

“Holy macaroni!” shouted Denise.