“Drat,” said Lenora.
A blur raced by. It was Lucy, taking advantage of a momentary lull in the storm to chase after the box, which had gone spinning away across the deck. Lenora jumped up and ran after her, while the sailor who had been chasing the koala stood staring in utter astonishment at the spot where it had vanished.
Dodging a couple of sailors who were also taking advantage of the lull to try to fix something on a sail (leaving them no time to gape at what Lenora was sure was her very odd appearance), she chased after Lucy down the length of the deck.
“Come back!” she yelled, thinking that they had to at least get to a relatively safe place belowdecks while she figured out a way to escape their predicament. But Lucy was determined to get that box, and get it she did. She popped off its lid immediately.
“Oh my gosh!” she screamed, looking down at whatever was in the box. She started toward Lenora. “Lenora! This is the coolest thing I have ever—”
And that was all, for then Lucy stepped into a puddle of water in her platform shoes, her feet went out from under her, and she and the box went over the railing and into the wine-dark sea.
Freezing cold water crashed over Lenora as she dove into the waters. She had given it no thought whatsoever before diving over the railing after Lucy, but on the way down she realized she had no idea if the other girl could even swim. Though Lenora was not about to abandon her friend anyway, leaving aside the fact that their situation, bad already, had just gotten immeasurably worse.
Fortunately, Lucy could swim. For when Lenora surfaced, struggling a bit in her dress and still gripping the koala’s backpack (fortunate also that not only could Lenora swim, but was in fact quite a good swimmer), she could see Lucy bobbing in the water, paddling desperately, only a very short distance away. Knowing that they could easily be separated in the rough seas, she kicked toward Lucy and put the arm holding the backpack around the girl as she paddled with her free hand.
Lucy seemed on the verge of tears. “Lenora,” she screamed. “I’m so sorry. I lost the box! It sank.”
“Forget about the box!” yelled Lenora. She was busy looking desperately for the ship. Despair crashed through her as she saw that it had already drifted quite far from them, and in a few more moments had disappeared almost entirely from sight. There was absolutely no way she and Lucy could swim back to it.
An enormous wave came up, and for a moment both girls went underwater. When they resurfaced, sputtering, Lenora almost losing her grip on her friend, she wondered if she should drop the backpack, and then wondered if it even mattered, for there was no help in sight and the two of them were not likely to make it for long in these rough, cold seas.
“What should we do?” screamed Lucy.
It did not help a bit, thought Lenora, that Lucy seemed to harbor no doubts at all that Lenora had a fix for this situation. She hated to disappoint her—and then she felt something bump into her leg. And she remembered:
Rosa, making a strangled, panicked noise, and whipping something through the air into Lenora’s pocket.
Rosa had known exactly what was about to happen, just as Lenora had.
Kicking hard to stay afloat, Lenora stabbed her hand into her pocket. When it came back up, she was holding another of the alien archeologist’s glittering devices, this one the size and shape of a large and heavy pen displaying a lot of swiftly changing symbols that Lenora did not recognize, and one thing she did recognize—a button.
“That’s Rosa’s thing!” screamed Lucy. “I think you should
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lenora and Ada
press it!”
But Lenora, of course, had already pressed the button on Rosa’s device, and by the time Lucy finished her unnecessary suggestion both girls were sitting on the Library floor in front of the floating alien, who was waving each of its sixteen or so tentacles in what seemed like a happy fashion.
“It is with relief,” said Rosa, “that I see you ascertained the purpose of my device.”
“Not exactly,” said Lenora, panting from exertion. A large pool of water was collecting around the girls, dripping from their clothes. “But you had obviously given it to me for a reason.”
“Yes. That”—and here Rosa used an alien word that Lenora did not understand—“will return objects and persons to me from anywhere they might be. I was sure you would return, but I am surprised to see you also recovered my notes in the process. Extraordinary.”
“I was not going to lose your notes,” said Lenora, handing the device and backpack over to the alien, who accepted both with one of its tentacles. “I hope they are waterproof and fireproof, like my notebook.”
“Naturally,” replied Rosa.
“The koala tried to steal something else, too,” said Lucy sadly. “But I lost it. It sank to the bottom of the sea.” She shivered, crossing both arms around herself.
“You must be cold,” said the alien. “Here.” It pointed another device, there was a flash, and the girls found themselves completely dry.
“Geez,” said Lucy. “Is there anything you can’t do?”
“Quite a bit,” said Rosa, but Lenora was not listening to this conversation. For she was looking past the archeologist now, and seeing that what had once been an empty section of the Library was now anything but. The room was rather small for a Library section, but the formerly bare walls were now covered with images of watery and badly corroded dials, gears, pins, and cranks, some of them looking like a partially assembled mechanism of some kind, and some simply lying on cloths on their own. Some of them had inscriptions on them that looked rather Greek-ish to Lenora.
In the middle of the room was a large table, and on that table was a giant cloth, and on that cloth were many bronze fragments that looked very much like cleaned-up versions of the things in the images.
Lucy had noticed them, too. “Hey,” she said, “that stuff looks really familiar.”
There was something else on the tablecloth. Pieces of a box, partially reassembled, with many parts missing, but looking much like a broken-up version of a box Lenora had seen only moments (or perhaps thousands of years, depending on how you looked at it) before.
“Uh-oh,” said Lenora to Rosa. “I think we might have changed history.” She was worried now, for in books, changing history was almost never good.
“Do not fear,” replied Rosa. “We all change history with everything we do. This is why we should consider our actions carefully, as each one will affect the future to come. Should we join Lucy?”
For Lucy had gone straight to the table, next to a puzzled-looking librarian who was peering down at the assorted fragments, his chin in his hand, deep in thought. So deep that he had completely failed to notice two girls and an alien who had popped out of nowhere—or had they? Lenora was not sure how history changes worked exactly. But she was sure now that the objects on the table had been in the same box that Lucy had lost in the sea.
Giving up (for the moment) on figuring out how history changing worked, Lenora went over to the table, Rosa beside her. She cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said to Cosmo (for that was the name on the librarian’s badge).
Cosmo flinched and, looking up, suddenly noticed Lenora and the others. “Oh!” he said. “My apologies. I have been studying the Antikythera mechanism so intently that I frequently fail to notice things around me.”