Atherton #3: The Dark Planet (No. 3) by Patrick Carman Page B

was here last?" Edgar asked himself. He knew the
    answer to the question. It was Dr. Harding. He would have
    come here one last time before closing the way in for good.
    At first glance the thing appeared to be a common piece of
    wood. It was four or five inches long and about the same width,
    and it was maybe an inch deep. When Edgar picked it up he
    found that it was heavier than he'd expected, and older, too. It
    was marred at the corners as if it had been dropped a great
    many times. In his hands it felt like something not of wood or
    stone but on the verge of being one or the other. All along the
    edges were words that had been burned into the surface, a
    large number of which Edgar could not read. And there were
    numbers-- lots of numbers.
    "I should have paid more attention to Samuel's teaching," said
    Edgar. He was newly embarrassed at his inability to read very
    well. He had learned some basics, but it had only been a year
    and he hadn't taken to studying as much as he'd hoped.
    Edgar leaned forward in the chair and held the block in the blue
    light. The words were burned in thin, black lines. Taking up
    most of one side was something that looked like a map. On the
    side he'd been looking at--the one with the map at the center-there were two words at the top. One word he could easily read,
    the other he could not. I-N-S-I-D-E A-T-H-E-R-T-O-N.
    "Atherton!" said Edgar. "But what's this other word?"
    He tried to sound it out but had a most difficult time of it.
    Frustrated, Edgar flipped the wood over and tried to read the
    words on the other side. At the top was a word Edgar could
    spell but not pronounce or understand.
    S-I-L-O.
    Beneath the four letters was a code of sorts, etched just as big
    as the word S-I-L-O.
    L-I-F-T-B-5.
    Under the large word and the code there were many hundreds
    more, but none of them were nearly as prominent. Numbers,
    sentences, whole paragraphs burned in with some kind of thin,
    precise instrument. The instrument of a madman, thought
    Edgar, because he knew this could only have been done by Dr.
    Harding when he was quickly turning into the monster he had
    become--Lord Phineus.
    "I wish you were here with me, Samuel. You could read this to
    me, like you've read to me before." Edgar felt totally alone in the
    quiet of a million firebugs. He examined the edges of the block,
    turning it in his hands, feeling for a notch. Just as he was
    thinking there was nothing there to find, he held the item by its
    corners and--more by accident than on purpose--pushed and
    played at the opposite ends. The two sides slid apart down the
    middle to reveal a hollow inside.
    There were two things hidden in that space. The first was the
    tool that appeared to have been used to write on the outside of
    the wood. The sharp tip of the instrument reminded Edgar of the
    spikes that covered the vessel he was sitting in. Inside the
    instrument glowed dozens of tiny blue dots.
    "Firebugs," remarked Edgar, wondering how they could have
    gotten there.
    Edgar picked up the pen and touched the tip to a clear spot of
    hard wood on the inside. He drew the pen down and it left a thin
    black mark and a tiny waft of smoke. Edgar twisted and turned
    the pen over the surface. It was as if it was melting the wood
    away in the thinnest of perfect lines and swishes. He was
    drawing on the wood with a firebug pen.
    "I like this thing," said Edgar, holding it up and seeing how it
    filled the air with soft blue light.
    He placed the pen back in its resting spot and picked up the
    other item hidden inside the tablet. The item was small and flat
    and smooth, like a perfectly shaped skipping rock. And it was
    solid black like so many other things Edgar had come to find in
    this place. He pressed it, tapped it, and walked around the
    vessel in vain searching for a place to insert it.
    Whatever the small object in his hand was it didn't seem to
    have any purpose, so Edgar set the disk down on the flat black
    table of glass before him and