— I’m not taking any chance of missing something cool.”
“Oh, for the love of mincemeat,” was her only response before she returned her attention to String Theory and Other Quantum Leaps in Quantum Physics .
Sera was a nerd in her own right, almost nerdy enough in stature to compete with Dak himself. Oh, who am I kidding? Dak thought. She had him beat by a mile.
This was the girl who had recently convinced him to attend a Saturday afternoon thesis reading at the local university — “convinced” him by threatening to scream out in the middle of lunch that she was in love with him if he said no. Dak had fiercely protested because he’d wanted to see the guy at the state fair who swore he was so old that he’d been Mussolini’s foot doctor during World War Two. (The man evidently had toenail clippings to prove it.) But Sera swore that it’d be more exciting to hear a three-hour presentation called “The Effect of Tachyon Generation on Ambient Wellsian Radiation.”
It wasn’t.
Sera had finally agreed to leave the presentation early, but only because the speaker kept using the words baryon and meson interchangeably when, according to Sera, everyone knows that’s not proper.
Suddenly Dak had an idea. He ran his fingers through his sandy blond hair and stared intently at his color-coded floor plan. “I guess we can skip the Hope Diamond exhibit if we’re short on time. It’s supposed to be cursed, which is cool. I’m not sure what it means by ‘an exploration of the biogeochemical processes that give minerals their unique properties,’ though. It sounds like a total snooze fest if you ask me.”
“Who asked you?” said Sera, putting her SQuare down. “Let me see that map.”
By the time Dak and Sera marched off the bus, Dak’s heart was giddy with excitement.
They had two hours and forty-seven minutes before the earthquake that would almost kill them.
Clifford Riley would like to acknowledge Christina McTighe.
Copyright © 2012 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.,
Publishers since 1920
. SCHOLASTIC , THE 39 CLUES , and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012953918
e-ISBN 978-0-545-53524-3
Cover design by Charice Silverman
Background: © Eky Studio/Shutterstock; gold disk: © J. Helgason/Shutterstock; bolts on disk, vault door, and hinges: © Spectral-Design/Shutterstock; vault lock: © andipantz/iStockphoto; string lights: © Steve Collender/Shutterstock
First edition, December 2012
Scholastic US: 557 Broadway · New York, NY 10012
Scholastic Canada: 604 King Street West · Toronto, ON M5V 1E1
Scholastic New Zealand Limited: Private Bag 94407 · Greenmount, Manukau 2141
Scholastic UK Ltd.: Euston House · 24 Eversholt Street · London NW1 1DB
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
“Oh, for the love of mincemeat,” was her only response before she returned her attention to String Theory and Other Quantum Leaps in Quantum Physics .
Sera was a nerd in her own right, almost nerdy enough in stature to compete with Dak himself. Oh, who am I kidding? Dak thought. She had him beat by a mile.
This was the girl who had recently convinced him to attend a Saturday afternoon thesis reading at the local university — “convinced” him by threatening to scream out in the middle of lunch that she was in love with him if he said no. Dak had fiercely protested because he’d wanted to see the guy at the state fair who swore he was so old that he’d been Mussolini’s foot doctor during World War Two. (The man evidently had toenail clippings to prove it.) But Sera swore that it’d be more exciting to hear a three-hour presentation called “The Effect of Tachyon Generation on Ambient Wellsian Radiation.”
It wasn’t.
Sera had finally agreed to leave the presentation early, but only because the speaker kept using the words baryon and meson interchangeably when, according to Sera, everyone knows that’s not proper.
Suddenly Dak had an idea. He ran his fingers through his sandy blond hair and stared intently at his color-coded floor plan. “I guess we can skip the Hope Diamond exhibit if we’re short on time. It’s supposed to be cursed, which is cool. I’m not sure what it means by ‘an exploration of the biogeochemical processes that give minerals their unique properties,’ though. It sounds like a total snooze fest if you ask me.”
“Who asked you?” said Sera, putting her SQuare down. “Let me see that map.”
By the time Dak and Sera marched off the bus, Dak’s heart was giddy with excitement.
They had two hours and forty-seven minutes before the earthquake that would almost kill them.
Clifford Riley would like to acknowledge Christina McTighe.
Copyright © 2012 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc.,
Publishers since 1920
. SCHOLASTIC , THE 39 CLUES , and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012953918
e-ISBN 978-0-545-53524-3
Cover design by Charice Silverman
Background: © Eky Studio/Shutterstock; gold disk: © J. Helgason/Shutterstock; bolts on disk, vault door, and hinges: © Spectral-Design/Shutterstock; vault lock: © andipantz/iStockphoto; string lights: © Steve Collender/Shutterstock
First edition, December 2012
Scholastic US: 557 Broadway · New York, NY 10012
Scholastic Canada: 604 King Street West · Toronto, ON M5V 1E1
Scholastic New Zealand Limited: Private Bag 94407 · Greenmount, Manukau 2141
Scholastic UK Ltd.: Euston House · 24 Eversholt Street · London NW1 1DB
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
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