Astrid brought the Maxxim Starcraft 170 down on the runway at LAX. The 170 was a sharp, if unusual looking aircraft. Designed by Astrid’s father, the 47-foot plane featured a long pointy fuselage with a small canard wing just behind the nose. The main wing was at the back of the aircraft, and carried twin turboprop engines, with the propellers facing rearward. These were known as push-props. The cabin, which could accommodate up to nine passengers, now seated only Penelope and Sabrina Scacchi and their carryon luggage. Astrid was, of course, up front, along co-pilot Don Herron.

Herron stayed with the plane, while the three young women disembarked and made their way into the LAX Private Terminal. Astrid was surprised to see her friend from France waiting just inside. Océane Feuillée was about an inch taller than Astrid and quite thin. Her pleasant face was framed in short black hair, cut in a cute little wedge. She reached out and embraced Astrid in a tight hug.

“Hello, Océane,” said Astrid. “I thought we would have to search for you.”

“You’re Miss Scacchi told me where to come.”

“And here she is. Océane, Sabrina Scacchi. Sabrina, Océane. And you remember my Aunt Penelope.”

“Oui.” The three women shook hands.

“So what is the big secret?” asked Astrid.

“Let’s find a quiet place, and I will tell you all about it.”

“I’ve reserved one of the private rooms here,” said Miss Scacchi. “It’s just down the hall.”

The small private room, enclosed in glass, was quiet and featured comfortable chairs. Astrid sat down next to Océane, and the other two sat across from them.

“So what’s going on?”

“I’ve been working with my friend Adeline Petit. She is a graduate student with my father, and she has been working on a special project for the past three years. So I decided to help. She is studying dolphins and their communication. It would be wonderful if you could create a device to translate their language to ours.”

“Of course that would be great,” said Penelope. “It’s not possible though.”

“Maybe it is,” said Astrid. “I’ve read about some work along that line that an engineer from Google was doing. It’s simply a matter of finding out what sounds are associated with what actions and objects.”

“You make that sound easy,” continued Penelope. “There could be millions of nouns and verbs to sort through.”

“Adeline has thousands of sounds recorded and identified,” said Océane. “She just needs the program and the computer. And it would have to be portable… and waterproof.”

“Is that all?” said Penelope.

“I think it can be done,” said Astrid. “What’s more, I want to do it. Where is she working? Hawaii?”

“No. She’s at a very small, uncharted island, in French Polynesia. It’s fifty miles east of Tahiti. She calls it Mokupuni Nai’a.”

“Dolphin Island,” translated Penelope.

“I didn’t know you spoke Tahitian,” Astrid remarked.

“I do, but that’s actually Hawaiian.”

“All right,” said Astrid. “I want to help, but why the hush hush? Why couldn’t you tell me all of this over the phone?”

“There’s more to it,” replied Océane. “Something is hurting the dolphins. There have been mass strandings every year for at least the last three years.”

“That’s horrible,” said Miss Scacchi.

“It is,” agreed Astrid. “But it happens all around the world. Why the secrecy?”

“We think it may be caused by the United States navy and their sonar. Adeline is afraid they will try to stop us from reporting it.”

“Well, I don’t think we really need to worry about nefarious Navy agents stalking us, but let’s agree to keep this all between us until we can figure out what’s really going on.”

“My flight leaves for Papeete Fa’a’ā in two hours,” said Océane.

“I need a while to get the necessary computer equipment together,” said Astrid. “Then I can fly the Starcraft out and meet you.”

“You can’t Astrid,” said Miss Scacchi. “Your mother said you must have an adult with you and I have to be back in Maxxim City by Monday.”

“I’ll go with Astrid,” said Penelope. “We’ll get you a first class ticket back home.”

“You don’t mind?” Astrid asked her aunt. “This may take weeks.”

“What? You need weeks to create a device to talk to another species? You must be slipping.”

Astrid laughed. “All right then. Let’s get Océane to her flight, get a ticket for Miss Scacchi…”

“Call me Sabrina please, Astrid.”

“Okay, but if my mother get’s mad, it’s your fault. A ticket for Sabrina. Then you and I, Aunt Penny, need to go to the computer store.”

Astrid Maxxim, brilliant teenage inventor returns. Astrid is looking forward to racing against a professional driving team to prove her electric racecar can take on the gas-guzzlers. Then without warning, she wakes up in the hospital with partial amnesia. What could have happened to her? Now everyone treats her like she’s brain-damaged! What if her IQ really did drop to 184? What a nightmare!

You can get Astrid Maxxim and the Electric Racecar Challenge for nook for just 99 cents.

Astrid spent the rest of the week close to home. Friday night, she had dinner with the Bundersmith family next door. Aunt Gerta baked a Schweinshaxe, a ham leg with a crunchy brown crust. It was moist and delicious on the inside. It was served with brown gravy and knödel, a type of boiled dumpling, that while delicious, Toby’s great-aunt seemed almost apologetic about serving.

“It’s not German, strictly speaking,” said Aunt Gerta, “but the boys like them.”

Both Toby and his father nodded.

“I’ve eaten your wonderful apple pies,” replied Astrid. “They may not be German, but they’re pretty fantastic.”

“Not tonight. We’re having Dampfnudel.”

Astrid turned her head to look at Toby.

“It’s like a cinnamon roll,” he said.

“There’s no cinnamon in it!” called Aunt Gerta over her shoulder, as she popped into the kitchen to bring out the dessert.

There might not have been any cinnamon, but it was quite like a sweet roll, filled with sugar and fruits, and topped with vanilla custard. As was usually the case when dining with the Bundersmiths, the girl inventor was very full when she returned home. Toby walked her to her front step and looked like he was going to bend over and kiss her, when Agent Toulson opened her front door.

Just after dinner, Astrid called her cousin Gloria.

“Are you going to Detroit this week?”

“I have to,” said Gloria. “I wanted to go to Puerto Vallarta for Spring Break, but Mom says she misses me or something.”

“And you’re too young to go to Mexico for Spring Break.”

“She might have said something along that line too.”

“So, when are you going to Detroit?” asked Astrid.

“Tomorrow at 10:00 AM.”

“Do you mind if I catch a ride?”

“It’s a free country. I mean, I don’t mind.” Astrid could almost hear the strain of trying to be pleasant in her cousin’s voice.

“Great,” said Astrid. “See you then.”

“Plans?” asked Kate Maxxim.

“I’m shooting up to Detroit for a couple of days.”

Her mother raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

Astrid arrived just before ten at the Maxxim airfield, with Priyanka Sharma in tow, and stepped up into the cabin of the Starcraft 170 commuter plane. Gloria was already seated about mid-plane, and standing in the aisle was Maxxim Industries pilot Carl Williams. Agent Sharma took a seat by the door.

“You’re flying us, Carl?” asked Astrid.

“No, you are.”

“I don’t know,” said Astrid. “I haven’t flown anything bigger than my hoverbike since my brain surgery.”

“And you crashed that,” added Gloria.

“Time to get back onto the horse,” said Williams. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right there next to you the whole way. I’ll make sure everything’s fine.”

“Please do,” said Gloria. “If we crash with her, your name probably won’t even make the papers, and mine will be at least a half column down.”

Feeling her stomach growl, the girl inventor looked up to see that it was almost 1:00 PM. She decided that rather than visit the cafeteria there in the R&D building, she would go on home. Chef Pierce could fix her something light that wouldn’t spoil her dinner that evening with Toby.

The weather was warm for late March, though it was a bit windier than one might have wished, flying fifty feet above the ground. Zipping down low, just over the tops of the saguaro cactuses and zooming back up and over the high red rocks, made Astrid smile. When a few strands of hair slipped from beneath her helmet and down onto her forehead, she broke into a laugh. She finally had hair long enough to get in the way!

Suddenly the gentle humming, which was a constant companion to anyone flying a hoverbike, went silent. The flying scooter dropped toward the ground like a brick, and Astrid went with it. She tried to steer toward a spot of soft sand, but the vehicle was completely unresponsive. There was no time to do anything else. Pushing herself away from the no longer flying scooter, she landed in the soft desert sand, just as the hoverbike crashed on a slightly firmer patch of gravel.

It was a minute before Astrid could suck any air back into her lungs. Though her entire left side hurt, there were no pains that stood out from the others. Carefully checking her legs and arms, and then feeling over the rest of her, Astrid decided that she hadn’t broken anything, at least not too badly. She sat slowly up and looked at her hoverbike. It was sitting about ten feet away. Though its frame was intact, the hoverdisks on the bottom were smashed to pieces.

Astrid tapped her Maxxim Carpé watch computer with her finger. Then she looked down at the device. The screen was shattered and there was a dent. Retrieving her phone from her pocket, she pressed the speed dial to her father.

“Hi, Astrid.”

“Hi, Dad. I’ve had a bit of a hoverbike crash. I’m alright, but I’m stuck out in the desert.”

Getting to her feet, the girl inventor looked at the landmarks all around her. Ahead of her, she could see the low rise of hills between her and Maxxim City. To both the north and south were large sandstone hills. She was north of the Saguaro Cactus Park and miles northeast of Pearl Lake. If she walked downhill, she would run into one of the many dry riverbeds in the area. They all flowed toward Pearl Lake, and between it and her was the monorail line.

“I think I can walk to the monorail from here,” she said. “It may take me an hour or so.”

“Astrid, stay where you are. How’s you’re phone battery?”

“It’s fine… um, seventy-four percent.”

“Good,” he said. “As long as it’s on, we can track you by GPS. Wait where you are.”

Astrid flew her hoverbike to the Maxxim Industries infirmary the next morning just before noon. The small but ultramodern medical facility serviced the emergency needs of the airfield, the spaceport, and the rest of the 180,000-acre campus. Dr. Crawford was waiting for her. She was just as Astrid remembered her, thin with straight red hair. She guided Astrid through an x-ray and CAT scan before meeting with her in an office borrowed from the infirmary’s regular doctor, Dr. Martinez.

“So what’s going on?” asked the neurosurgeon.

“I think that is for you to tell me,” replied Astrid.

“I don’t see anything medically to be concerned about. How is your memory?”

“Pretty good, I guess,” said Astrid. “I have found a few things that I couldn’t remember.”

“That’s to be expected. Your mother says you’ve been a bit cranky.”

“Only when people are annoying me, or you know… being dumb.”

Dr. Crawford smiled.

“Next to you, I’m dumb, and I was at the top of my class at Johns Hopkins. I suspect your irritability has less to do with your injury and more to do with the everyday stress you put on yourself. I only know what I read in the papers, but you might be pushing yourself too hard. You have a lot going on between high school and running one of the largest corporations in the world.”

“I don’t really run it,” said Astrid.

“Plus, you’re a teenager and teenagers are notoriously moody. I imagine your mom has not had much experience with teenage rebellion. You don’t strike me as a particularly rebellious young lady.”

“That’s not true,” said Astrid. “Two months ago, I went into space without asking anybody. I got grounded too.”