A Mountain of Secrets: Adventures of a Young Scientist

By Lloyd Sparks

With the collapse of the government after the Second World War, Americans have learned to live without help or interference from police, lawyers and bureaucrats. In this simple and happy world lives an eleven-year-old boy who wants to be a scientist. Having found a plant that makes concentrated uranium, he and his friends build a spaceship out of the strongest substances known to man-spider webs and egg shells. They fly into outer space, but barely make it back alive.

Forced to crash land on Mount Saint Helens on Halloween, they encounter the frightening and magical inhabitants of a secret world. The young scientist discovers that the secrets that lie within his own mind can be more astounding than a trip into outer space.

They eventually make it home, only to be grounded for going into outer space without asking permission. In the end they learn that there is still much to discover in their own back yard.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 29, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595867936

Lloyd Sparks

Lloyd Sparks is a best-selling author of science adventure novels and winner of Writer’s Digest’s Best New Author of 2006, category Young Adult Fiction. He is best known for his work in fiction reflecting a well traveled and widely diverse background of experience. Dr. Sparks lives in Massachusetts.

Book preview

AMOUNTAIN OF

SECRETS

Adventures of a Young Scientist

Lloyd Sparks

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

A Mountain of Secrets

Adventures of a Young Scientist

Copyright © 2007 by Lloyd Albert Sparks, Jr

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any

means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the

written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations

embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and

dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are

used fictitiously.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-42459-7 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-86793-6 (ebk)

Contents

Prologue

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

Epilogue

Everything in this book is true, except that parts that aren’t.

Everybody in this book is real, except the people who aren’t.

Everything in this book really happened, except the parts that didn’t.

For Snide, the only reason I looked forward to going to junior high

every day.

Prologue

In the first book, The Uranium Plant, I tell of how I found a bush on Mount Saint Helens that produced enriched uranium. The plant was stolen, but not before my best friend Dave was able to make a nuclear reactor, which we will soon put to good use. When the plant is finally found, it no longer makes uranium. It lacks something special, something that can only be found hidden within a mountain of secrets.

CHAPTER 1 

You know you can talk to your father or me about anything that’s on your mind, right? asked Mom one morning.

Sure, I assured her.

Anything at all, she added.

Right.

Is there anything you want to talk to me about?

No, Mom, I answered. She was acting strange. Like she wanted to talk about something but didn’t quite know how to begin. Should there be?

Well, the principal just called …

What about? I asked.

Something about somebody writing dirty words on the school-house wall, she said. He seems to think you might know something about it.

Now that really threw me for a loop. I’m the last person anybody would accuse of using dirty language. There were a few kids in school who seemed to know a lot of dirty words, but they weren’t my friends.

To be honest, I could never understand what makes a word dirty. At my house you can get in trouble for saying butt but not but. And you can talk about an ass if you mean a donkey in the Bible, but not somebody’s bottom. And it can’t be that certain body parts are dirty. You can talk about landing on your bottom or on your seater rumpus. So your agnus isn’t a dirty idea by itself.

I don’t get it, but once I tried to make one of the rules of my club that there are no dirty words. You can say whatever you like and nobody can do anything about it, because there are no dirty words. That didn’t get anywhere. Nobody talked any different than before.

I’ll ride down there and see what Mr. Fleck wants, I said. Although it was July, summer school was going on, so some of the teachers were there. Mom called the school and I got my bike.

At school, Mr. Fleck met me outside and took me around back. Some of the little kids showed me this, he said.

There on the wall was a dirty word directed at the principal, Mr. Fleck.

They said you and your friends play up here a lot and you might know who did it, he said.

I have no idea, Mr. Fleck, I said. You don’t think I did it, do you?

No, Lloyd. Of course not! he said. But do you have any idea who might have done it.

Not really. I know some kids who might have, but I really don’t know who did it, I said honestly.

"Who do you think might have done it?" he asked, leaning closer.

"Well, Doug Jones might have," I suggested. Doug was one of the kids with a bad reputation. He was something of a sneak and liked dirty words. But he wasn’t the only one I could have suggested. The list could have been expanded quite a bit.

Doug Jones happened to be playing in the schoolyard at that moment with Randy Lounsbury and Nelson Coonie. It was a pretty popular playground for lots of us even when we weren’t in school.

Wait here, Mr. Fleck said. Then, to my horror, he went and got Doug and brought him over.

Doug, did you write this? he asked sternly, pointing to the graffiti.

No! whined Doug. I didn’t do it!

Now, Lloyd, are you accusing Doug of doing this? Mr. Fleck asked me.

N-n-no! I stammered. "I just said he might have done it," I looked at Doug, who was staring at me with some combination of disbelief and contempt.

But you think he did it? Mr. Fleck pressed.

I don’t know who did it, I said.

There was a pause as Mr. Fleck looked from one of us to the other and back again. Then he said, All right. You two can go.

Doug ran back to the playground and, although I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I could see he was telling Randy and Nelson what had happened. From the way they looked at me, I could see they didn’t think much of me at that point. I walked over to get my bike.

"He practically said, ‘I saw you do it!’" Doug said to the others when I was close enough to hear. I got on my bike without a word and left.

I can’t remember ever feeling worse. And I hadn’t even done anything wrong. I wondered how I could make it up to Doug. I wondered if there would be any way to explain my situation to the guys. At that point, I resolved to never cooperate with Mr. Fleck again.

And maybe with no grown ups at all.

Ever.

Later, after I calmed down, I got to wondering about what that dirty word meant. What could be so bad that it would have made Mr. Fleck so angry? As I said before, I don’t really understand what the deal is with dirty words. I don’t even have a clue as to what some of them could possibly mean. The one on the wall at the school was one of those words I don’t understand, but know it’s really, really bad. Ten on a ten-point scale.

I don’t understand that word, and it isn’t the kind of thing you can ask your parents about. I was pretty sure my friends knew no more about it than I did. I didn’t understand that word, but I knew someone who would.

CHAPTER 2 

If anyone knew dirty words, it was Sue Bauer. Sue lives off to the side of the woods past the pond. She’s several years older than me, about the same age as some of the girls who used to baby-sit us. But Mom and Dad would never have let Sue Bauer baby-sit. She had a bad reputation. I heard somebody say once that she was fast but I’m not really sure what that means. Her boyfriends aren’t nice guys, either. Some of them smoke. She’s the only cussing girl I know. The older kids never cuss or tell dirty jokes in front of us younger kids, but I heard Sue say a bad word once. She not only doesn’t care, she actually seems to like shocking people.

I think she does it for the attention. I’ve never seen her actually do anything wrong and personally I like her a lot. We have a strange relationship for a grade school boy and a teenage girl. It’s all because of our swamp secret.

Most of the woods next to Sue’s horse pasture are flooded during the winter up until about June, so nobody goes in there. We call it a swamp, but it isn’t really quite like a real swamp with stinky brown water and quicksand and snakes and alligators. The water, since it comes from all the rain, is pretty clear. If you spend as much time as I do in the woods, you can find your way around the swamp without even getting your feet wet by following the high places, clumps of trees, fallen logs and such. And there are trails through the woods that only I know about.

I saw a movie about Harry Houdini, the great magician. He used to train himself to hold his breath a long time and soak himself in ice water. I was so inspired last winter that I decided to train myself in the same way. I could already hold my breath for over a minute. And I heard that some pearl divers can hold their breath for over five minutes!

I started to train by going out into the swamp as often as I could, taking off my clothes and lowering myself into the icy water. I knew a place where the water was maybe a foot or two deep, so it was perfect. At first, it was all I could do just to get into the water before I’d jump out, towel off and scramble back into my clothes. By May though, it wasn’t so cold and I could stay in for over ten minutes. I would practice holding my breath by lying face down and was up to almost two minutes.

One day in May, I was training, lying face down and counting the seconds to myself. I was past a hundred when I heard, or rather felt, sort of a thump, thump, thump from under the water. Then, suddenly, there was some splashing and two arms grabbed me under the armpits and pulled me up out of the water. I shook my head and wiped the water from my eyes, and the first thing I saw was the face of a girl with a concerned look. It was Sue Bauer.

Are you okay? she asked. There she was, completely bare-naked, standing with me in the water, with both hands holding my arms. Behind her stood her horse, Champion, calmly watching us.

I’m fine. I was just… I stammered. What are you doing?

"What am I doing? What are you doing? Are you nuts?" she asked.

I was just training, I sputtered. Like Harry Houdini. Holding my breath.

Well, I thought you were dead! she said. Have you lost your mind? Out here in the cold without any clothes, lying in the water face down. I had to admit that it must have looked a little strange.

But she wasn’t exactly dressed for church herself. And she was probably sixteen or so, well