Noah And The Solar-Powered Ark

By Jill Morsbach

Young Noah Quark tells the story of his incredible voyage around the world in a modern solar-powered flying ark, built in the Cape Town docks by his somewhat irresponsible inventor father, Professor Ebenezer Quark, to rescue endangered animals.

   This is a fantasy tale of high adventure, in which Merlin's rediscovered wand weaves a sinister magic web round Noah and his friends. They grapple with a scheming wizard, a treacherous goblin and ultimately become imprisoned under Mount Ararat, which is the proposed site of the professor's zoo for his rescued animals.

   How Noah and his support team can escape from the secret underground lava kingdom ruled by King Vulcan, and also guarantee the success of the professor's zoo, will present them with the greatest challenges they have faced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jill Morsbach
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201930493

Book preview

Chapter 1

Dad’s Grandest Scheme

My dad, Ebenezer Quark, is a brilliant but sometimes offbeat inventor.

We used to live on the campus of a Cape Town university, where he was a Science and Geology professor. He’d already made plenty of money from some of his inventions but that didn’t stop him from doing experiments. Two years ago, when I was eleven, things started to go wrong with some of them. So we had to leave.

Dad’s Grandest Scheme

7

The first was when he turned one of his students purple. For ages, he couldn’t get the guy back to his normal colour. Finally, he did, except for the hair. Luckily, coloured hair was in at that time and so the guy didn’t really mind. But the rector wasn’t impressed. Dad got his first warning, but he laughed it off. A serious experimenter, he said, does make the odd mistake.

The second thing was when the frogs in Dad’s lab escaped. That shouldn’t have been a major problem except they were the size of bull terriers. It took a pack of hunting dogs to clean up the frogs. It was a pretty lively time on the campus. And Dad got his second warning.

The third thing happened when the dean of the faculty came visiting in the lab. By acci-dent, Dad spilt some of his experimental limb growth chemical on him. He was trying to invent something to help athletes grow longer legs. But it turned out the dean grew two extra arms. He was kind enough to say he’d always wanted spare arms to help him get through his daily workload. But again the rector wasn’t impressed, even though Dad’s shrinking chem-ical got rid of the arms in less than a month.

The final thing that had us packing our bags was when Dad’s space rocket took off by mistake and blew a hole in the lab roof. It landed almost on top of the rector who was taking a stroll in the 8

Noah and the Solar-Powered Ark

campus rose garden. He wasn’t really damaged apart from scorched hair. But there was a big dent in his patience. The final dent.

Dad was sad we had to leave but said it was an opportunity to move on to bigger projects.

So when we’d finally finished packing up our campus flat, apart from two mattresses to sleep on, I got to hear about his new idea. Unknown to me, he’d been working on it for some time.

My boy, he said (we were sitting that evening on boxes and eating hotdogs from the

’varsity cafeteria), it’s now time for me to save what there still is to save. He brushed back his mop of thick straw-coloured hair that always stuck up everywhere and gave me a serious look over his specs.

I’ve got the same mostly out-of-control hair, but I remember to comb it. More in memory of Mom ─ who died of an illness when I was nine

─ than because I’m a tidy kind of guy. She always made sure I looked neat and well-brushed before I went to school.

I sure do miss Mom. She always managed to keep Dad in check when he was going overboard with any of his experiments. If she’d still been around I think she could have calmed down the rector and got him to give Dad another chance. She would also have made a better job of clearing up the flat than we did.

Dad was forever packing and then unpacking Dad’s Grandest Scheme

9

boxes because he was looking for mislaid bits of apparatus.

We’ve saved all our stuff, I said, looking around the flat. I can’t see that we’ve forgotten anything.

"I don’t mean our stuff, Noah, said Dad. I mean saving animals. Rare and endangered animals, that one day will disappear if we don’t do anything about it. I want to save what I can before the second Great Flood. You know about the first one. It’s an old story."

I licked up some tomato sauce dripping off my hotdog and said, You mean, the one about Noah and the ark?

Yip. And you’re also Noah. It’s a sign. Of what, Dad?

Of good fortune. This is going to be my Grandest Scheme. He put aside his half-eaten hotdog. His blue eyes began to sparkle with excitement. I knew that look. It meant there was an idea that wasn’t going to be stopped.

I thought about the purple guy and the frogs and the other disasters and felt my heart sink a little. Uh, what exactly do you have in mind?

I asked.

"You know I’ve long had a fear about climate change and global warming. Soon all the ice will melt, and we’ll be living under water. Or most of us will. So we need to find a place on higher ground where we’ll be safe.

We and our animals."

10

Noah and the Solar-Powered Ark

What animals?

The ones we’re going to save, Dad said patiently as if I should read what was going on in his head. We’re going to build an ark out of polylite and go round the world collecting rare species. At least two of each. Then we’ll buy a zoo and keep them there, safe from the Flood.

Polylite was a silvery light-weight metal manufactured out of a rare metallic ore that Dad had discovered some time back. On a scientific expedition to central Africa, he’d come across the outcrop of polylite ore and after some experimenting had seen what the ore could be turned into. He’d bought the rights to the ore and established a mine on the site. It was the only site in the world where polylite ore was mined, and one of Dad’s most successful undertakings.

Where ─ will we buy ─ a zoo? I asked while trying to swallow a piece of hotdog stuck in my throat.

"I’ve already been on the internet and there’s a zoo advertised at a good price that I’ve made a handsome offer for. I’m sure I’ll get it. It’s on a mountain, far away from here...

You can guess where it is. Think of Noah, the original one, and where he ended up."

Mount Ararat? I got out. I didn’t for a moment think that was the right answer. I just wanted Dad to know I’d remembered the Bible story.

Dad’s Grandest Scheme

11

He clapped his hands together, beaming all over his face. Right first time!

I choked on my hotdog and Dad had to thump me on the back till the piece shot out onto the floor.

The zoo’s on the lower slopes of Ararat, below the snowline, he went on, unfazed by my reaction. I plan to move all the animals to the top of the mountain and cover the whole zoo with my Bubbleshield. As protection against the cold.

I focused on what mattered right then.

Where will I go to school if we’re going to live on Mount Ararat? I demanded.

You’ll do homeschooling, over the internet.

And where will we build the ark?

At the Cape Town docks. Uncle Charlie will give us a space. Uncle Charlie, Dad’s cousin, was the port captain. He got on well with Dad.

But I wasn’t prepared to give up on school so easily. It was January, the beginning of the school year. I’d managed to make it into a couple of school sports teams, and I had some good friends I didn’t fancy leaving behind.

Dad finally noticed my unwilling face.

Noah, how many boys your age get to go around the world in a ship? And you’ll make plenty of new friends.

Who? Where?

The animals, to start with.

12

Noah and the Solar-Powered Ark

I can’t talk to animals. Or do sport with them.

Not yet. But I’ve got a remedy for that. It will be very important to have someone at my zoo who can communicate with the animals on their own terms.

Like teaching them to kick a ball ─ or talk English? I was joking, of course.

"Not talk, at least, not in human language.

Animals understand us, of course, but they can’t tell us that. When you ‘speak’ to an animal your words will come out in their language, and you’ll be able to understand their replies."

I stared at him. How can I possibly do that?

Dad showed me. Once he’d dug out his laser drill from the box containing his vests and underpants, and the smaller than pea-sized microchip he’d apparently been developing secretly for some time, he got to work on me in the kitchen. In no time, I had a small hole in my left temple, with the microchip stuck in it. A plaster strip covered the wound.

The laser had deadened the nerves in that area. Luckily, I hadn’t felt a thing. When I combed my hair down over the place nothing showed.

Dad pressed a button on a small remote control device to activate the chip. Now we’ll see if it works, he said with a self-satisfied grin. Let’s ask Bonny.

Dad’s Grandest Scheme

13

Bonny was my cat. Like plenty of cats, she was lazy and selfish but that didn’t mean I didn’t love her. She was a beautiful tortoise-shell animal with big green eyes. Dad fetched her from my bedroom where she was snoozing in her basket and carried her to the kitchen.

She was yawning. That might have been what it sounded like to Dad but to me, it wasn’t yawning. She was talking.

Hope these guys have got something for me to eat at last, said the yawns.

Hi, Bonny, I said, which came out like a miaow. You’ll get your supper right now.

She jerked in Dad’s arms and fixed me with her big eyes. Hey, Noah, how did you learn our lingo?

Magic, I miaowed, and then I had to laugh. I gave Bonny her supper. After she’d miaowed,

Thanks; till breakfast, and strolled back to her basket I said, "Why me? I mean, you should have got the microchip, Dad."

Dad said, Kids often relate better to animals than grown-ups. Remember our parrot? And our bush baby? You had a real connection with them.

I did have a way with animals. So maybe being able to talk to them wouldn’t be such a bad thing, if I was going to help run a zoo.

I discovered that Dad had already e-mailed Mr Bingley, my headmaster, that he would be 14

Noah and the Solar-Powered Ark

taking me out of school towards the end of the year ─ when the ark was finished, although at first Dad didn’t say anything about that. Just as well, or I reckon old Bingley would have got the school shrink on to him.

The day after our hot dog dinner was Saturday, so no school. After we’d stored all our boxes, except for some essentials, with a company in town until we could reload the stuff onto the ark, we went to the docks with Bonny and met Uncle Charlie in his office.

Nothing much bothered Dad’s cousin. He was a big, bald-headed guy with a round smiling face, always happy and in love with the good life. He’d never married because he was still waiting for the right mermaid to be washed up at the docks. So he said. He also liked cats.

Bonny was his favourite.

When Dad told him over a pot of tea about his Grandest Scheme, Uncle Charlie just laughed, stroked Bonny who was purring on his lap and said, Great idea, Ebenezer. You got a plan of the ark?

Dad’s Grandest Scheme

15

Chapter 2

The Ark Takes Shape

Dad had a plan of the ark all ready, which he unrolled. It looked much like the ark pictured in Bible stories, only longer and more streamlined.

On the top deck was the bridge: a two-storeyed structure with a sloping roof and rounded at the front. There all the controls were housed. Below the top deck were four floors or decks: the first deck, one down, for the humans, the second one for the animals, the third one for the huge engine, and the lowest deck ─ the only one below the waterline ─ for storage space.

Noah’s ark didn’t have an engine, I said.

No, Dad agreed. I haven’t quite worked out whether they rowed the thing or used sails, but we’ll use solar energy. The top deck and the bridge roof will be covered in high-powered solar panels. The engine will store sunlight energy transmitted to it, so it can operate even when the sky’s overcast.

A solar engine? Uncle Charlie remarked.

How will that work?

16

Noah and the Solar-Powered Ark

Dad smiled. So far solar energy has mainly been used to generate electricity for use in build-ings. But my invention will use solar power to drive a ship’s engine. Which will do more than just sail a ship. It’s also an aeronautical engine. Haven’t you realised, he went on as we looked puzzled, that Mount Ararat is in the middle of the land, eastern Turkey to be exact? How could a ship end up there before there’s any Flood for it to sail on?

Your ark can fly? Uncle Charlie said with a grin before I had got around to working it out.

Dad nodded. "That’s why it’s a streamlined shape. When I switch over to ‘aero’ or flying mode, the engine will generate enough heat radiation to jet-propel the ark out of the water.

Air will be sucked into the bow of the ship through vents and be heated by the solar power of the engine. Super-hot air will then be blown through outlets, or huge exhaust pipes, in the stern, with enough force to provide the neces-sary forward thrust."

And the wings? Uncle Charlie asked. The ark will have huge wings made of hinged sections that can be stacked in the store-room on the bottom deck. When we want to fly we just join them together and fix them to the sides of the ship. Once we’re airborne the wings will keep the ark stable during flight. Foldaway wheels under the hull will flap down when the ark lands.

The Ark Takes Shape

17

The wings will also be polylite? I put in.

Of course. Light enough for flying, but also strong enough to carry the weight of the ark.

I believe your polylite is now being used in the motor industry, Uncle Charlie said.

Dad nodded again. The Quark Polylite Mine can hardly keep up with the demand. The sales of my new metal have been excellent, especially as it’s both fireproof and waterproof. The money will cover all the costs of my ark expedition and let me buy as many animals as I want.

Won’t you need permission to fly over Turkish air space? Uncle Charlie asked.

"Yip. I’ve already written to the