CHAPTER 5
Under the Boardwalk

Wilt found the right key and opened the studio door, flipped on the light, and they all trooped in. "Wow," said Maud, "this place is `cool' the other way too! Look at all this stuff, and these pots and bowls and mugs and —"

"Hey!" cut in Sparrow. "These mugs look just like the one we dug up!" She hesitated a moment, staring at five mugs in a row. "Only... only they're a bit smaller, and the surface and colors aren't quite right. Could there have been another discovery at the site, that I missed somehow? Or maybe Dr. Leong heard about Dr. Petrie's farmer connection and scouted around..." She trailed off, puzzled but unable to come up with a plausible theory.

"Nah," said Wilt. "I'll bet these are copies Dad made from plaster molds of the original, and the glazes are just something he cooked up, trying for a match. See how the colors run from darker on the left mug to lighter on the right? I think he just did what's called a `line blend' between a dark glaze and a light one. If we look around we'll probably find the mold set; it'll be one of those big white blocks with giant rubber bands around it to hold the sections together."

"But if they were made from a mold, wouldn't they be exactly the same size?" wondered Frax.

"Yes and no," replied Wilt. "The mold would be exactly the same, true, and the mugs'd be nearly the same size when they came out of the mold. But clay shrinks as it dries, and it shrinks even more when it's fired. Could be ten percent or more, total. If you want to get the same size, the way to go is a 3D scan, then scale it up by the same percent you know it'll shrink, and send it to a 3D printer to make an enlarged model for mold-making. Then when it's all fired it comes out just right. He's done that before, so we might find some full-size mugs around here, too."

They examined the so-called mugs. Evenly spaced around each cylindrical body, the three handles were fat straps more than an inch wide and a quarter-inch thick. Viewed edge-on, each was an elongated rectangle with rounded ends, a central opening about an inch wide, and sides parallel to the body cylinder. The rounded top of each handle protruded above the rim, and the bottom likewise protruded below the base, so together the three handles held the mug above the table top.

The main surface of the cylinder was decorated with rounded rectangles with open centers, also running top to bottom but flattened so they looked like elongated stadiums or race tracks.

Inside, the mug was shallower than expected from its outward appearance, as if the bottom was quite thick.

"Sheesh!" said Wilt. "The mold for these babies must have a lot of parts, to keep from having undercuts that would prevent it from releasing. I don't know why he'd be trying to make copies anyway, unless maybe so he could show them, or send them, to others without risking the real deal.

"But whatever they're for, I can't see how they'll help us figure out what's going on; I think we need notebooks or something. If there aren't any on the long bench, they'd be in one of the upper drawers."

The long bench ran almost the length of the garage, starting near the door they had entered. It was set out several feet from the right wall, as a sort of island. Shallow shelves between the studs of the wall held pint- and quart-sized jars of powders in various off-white and pastel shades, neatly labeled and arrayed like spices in a giant's kitchen rack.

The aisle between the shelves and the island bench had a raised floor of wood planking, presumably for comfort when standing at the bench in winter, instead of on cold concrete.

At the far end of the aisle, Wilt pointed out a small curtained chamber with a vent hood on top that served as a spray booth for glazes. "It has its own fan that pulls air out and dumps it behind the garage. Same with the kilns," he said, pointing.

The bench itself held an old mechanical balance, assorted utensils like scoops and measuring spoons, a half-face respirator mask, and various items unknown to Frax. Under the bench were the drawers Wilt had mentioned, and below them were bins with big plastic containers neatly labeled with names like "Nepheline Syenite", "EPK", and "Flint - 200".

While Wilt rummaged through the drawers, the others gawked at all the varied equipment in the rest of the studio. Frax had gotten only a quick glimpse on their earlier foray, but now he took a closer look.

In the center near the rear of the garage were the two big octagonal electric kilns, their gleaming stainless housings reflecting the overhead lights. Heavy electrical conduit tubing led to each kiln from a massive breaker box in the middle of the rear wall. Flexible metal ducts, like industrial-strength dryer vents, issued from beneath each kiln and converged at a box high on the wall, which evidently held the exhaust fans Wilt had pointed out.

Exhaust fans? Frax's thoughts went back to the mysterious birdbath. If Maud's theory was right, there should be some sort of fan blowing cool underground air, which would have a visible grille, or at least be making a breeze, somewhere in the studio. He wandered around, checking all the possibilities by eye and by feel.

Nothing, and no sound of a fan. Curiouser and curiouser.

"Guys, this may or may not be relevant, but I can't find any sign of Maud's cooling system around here. If the birdbath isn't connected to the house, and not to the studio, then where is the air going?"

Wilt, having gone through all the drawers and come up with nothing resembling a notebook, was standing with a distant look in his eyes, tapping one foot on the wooden aisle planking, deep in thought. Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk.

Suddenly he bent down and started pulling at the planks, feeling for a handhold on each in turn. "Got it!" he shouted at last, tilting up a four-foot section with concealed hinges. Below it, set into a steel-edged recess of the concrete floor, was a second trap door. It was slightly smaller, made of gray-painted steel, with a big handle. By heaving on this, the inch-thick lower door pivoted up to lean against the now-vertical plank door.

"For as thick as it is, it's certainly not solid steel," mused Wilt. "Must have some sort of lightweight core to make it easier to lift. Maybe insulating firebrick like they use in kilns."

He maneuvered carefully in the narrow aisle, avoiding the gaping hole in the concrete floor. An aluminum ladder led down into darkness. "The birdbath vent is for a fallout shelter!"

They all looked at each other, thinking the same thought: Could the missing pair be hiding out in the shelter, maybe to keep the mug safe from Grashof and Prandtl and friends?

"Let's go check." Wilt started down the ladder, which was bolted solidly at top and bottom to the studio side of the concrete shaft. "I guess my folks had good reasons not to tell me about this when I was little, so I didn't fall in, or get myself trapped inside, or blab it around the neighborhood and have it be a magnet for other kids. But it might have been nice to know about when I got older, in case of a tornado, or I guess even a real war."

The shaft was four feet square and at least twelve feet deep, with concrete walls. Wilt started his descent, while Frax and the girls crowded carefully around the edge to watch. A third of the way down, the shaft widened on both sides.

Wilt shouted up to the others. "There seems to be a big concrete-walled tunnel heading toward the back of the garage. Too dark to see anything there."

When he got to the bottom, which looked quite dark from above, Wilt pulled out his phone and played the light around.

"What's that on your left?" asked Frax. "Looks like the edge of a door or something."

"Yeah," Wilt shouted up. "Goes under the garage floor. Steel, big and heavy-looking, like something from a meat locker or a bank vault. There's some kind of electrical conduit elbow thing at the upper corner that keeps it from closing all the way; obviously not part of the original fallout shelter. Elbow looks pretty solid, with fat steel conduit running from there, behind the ladder, and along the roof of the tunnel — probably to the junction box on the back of the garage. The door's a good six inches thick. I'm gonna look inside."

The door had a large but simple strap-type handle. Wilt heaved, and the massive door slowly swung outward. The others, not wanting to miss anything, began swarming down the ladder.

"Dad? Anybody in here?" Dead silence, except for soft fan whirring. While the rest were assembling behind him, he ventured in. "Hold up a minute until I check this out..."

Frax peered eagerly from beside Wilt, waiting impatiently. There were no overhead lights inside, but it wasn't totally dark; tiny indicators glowed from racks of electronic equipment near the right wall, dimly illuminating a shadowy jungle of fat electrical-cable vines sprouting from the racks, some snaking across the floor and some draped overhead. Everything converged on a mysterious hulk in the middle of the chamber, with a tiny spotlight shining on something smaller next to it.

Beaming his phone around from the doorway, Wilt found a light switch. When the fluorescents sputtered on, everyone gaped as the hulk resolved into a cylinder about three feet in diameter and three feet long, lying on its side and decorated with elongated coils of heavy wire arranged into a giant's version of the mug artifact. The cylinder was on a slight pedestal such that the coil "handles" were of just the right dimensions so the lower two touched the floor like outriggers to keep the cylinder from rocking, while the third rose from the upper surface like a fat shark fin with a cutaway hole.

A few feet in front of the giant mug opening was a tripod, like photographers or surveyors use, but with its mounting post inverted so the head hung below the junction of the tripod legs. Attached to the head was what surely must be the original artifact itself, suspended on its side with the bottom facing the giant. Its iridescent surface shimmered beneath a miniature spotlight clamped to the tripod.

The small mug looked like a little fish about to be swallowed whole by the big one.

Multi-colored wire tendrils flowed from myriad points on the artifact, merging into a bundle ascending nearly to the ceiling, then draping over to another rack before descending and branching off to assorted connections there. These led to fifteen large "Pro"-grade audio power amplifiers stacked in three racks, from which issued the fat snakes leading to the giant mug.

"Holy shit!" breathed Frax from the doorway. "Your father's a mad scientist!"